The phrase "a startling thing" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is surprising or shocking in nature.
Example: "The sudden announcement of the merger was a startling thing for the employees to hear."
Alternatives: "an astonishing fact" or "a shocking revelation".
It was a startling thing.
Then a startling thing happened.
"That is rather a startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion".
Players like Al Sontag, a pitcher signed by the Bluefish in March, are humble -- a startling thing in itself in professional sports.
That this is a startling thing to say is the result of years of back-and-forth argument between powerful factions.
It's a startling thing to see erupting through the tree canopy, which otherwise extends for miles, punctuated only by the occasional industrial shed and shining metal chimney.
This is a rather startling thing for a marketing expert to admit about his own book, but the truth is experts are not exempt from an ugly truism: Most books fail.
But the next day, while running errands in Plantation, an even more startling thing happened: two giant yellow eyes blinked back at Williams from inside the grille of her SUV.
But the startling thing about a Belichick defense is that an opponent seldom sees the same thing from week to week, and certainly not from one game to the next time the teams play.
That's why the startling thing about a photograph of the Place Saint-Andre des Arts, taken around 1865, isn't the two covered wagons resting on wooden wheels in front of the building, or the horses hitched to them, but the building itself, which is covered in words: ads for carpenters, for leather, for wine, for a steam bath on Rue Monsieur le Prince and a humbler "water bath" on Rue Larrey.
The most startling thing on the runway was a little portable lipstick case on a gold chain slung across a shoulder, a surreptitious announcement of the brand's first cosmetic.
