If your email is anything like mine, it is filled with headlines the writers believe will draw you in and make you click their links. I believe they’re called “click bait.”

There are two things wrong with their thinking.

One is that we are becoming sick and tired of these overused words. What words? Here are a few:

• Bomb / bombshell
• Riveting
• Shock /shocked
• Stuns / stunned
• POW
• Panic
• Fatal mistake

Do you bother to open links with those words in the headline/teaser?

I quit opening most of them months ago, and for two very good reasons.

Usually they are either “old news” or there’s nothing shocking, riveting, stunning, etc. in the article.

The second thing wrong with their thinking, and the second reason why I seldom click is that these headline writers make a habit of breaking one of the basic rules of copywriting.

Very often, the headline has nothing at all to do with the article that follows.

I’ve read a few that made absolutely no mention of anything referenced in the headline. If you do that a time or two - or perhaps even one time – you’ll throw your credibility out the window.

People don't like to be fooled, so don't try.

As for avoiding the misleading words...

There aren’t a whole lot of reasons why these words should creep into your writing, but there are a few.

• You might be describing how quickly you can sell a listing. (You’ll be shocked at…)
• You might be describing a view. (You’ll be stunned by the riveting view!)
• You might be urging buyers to act quickly (hesitation is a fatal mistake?)

In this year of exaggeration, you might want to avoid all "puffing" in your property descriptions.

After all, what you think is "beautiful" or "large" might mean something entirely different to your reader.

I think of a time years ago when one of my co-workers was speaking with a buyer in the office. He told her that a property had beautiful trees. She replied that the only beautiful tree was a dead one, cut up for firewood.

And "large?" I've seen quarter-acre parcels described as large. My thought: No, that would be "tiny."