In some agencies, the acting commissioners are competing to get the posts permanently, and want to avoid missteps or misstatements.

Justice Department officials, emboldened by last week's decision, say they are moving quickly to allow prosecutors and intelligence agents to share information routinely to avoid missteps.

In these studies, they try to identify ethical lapses committed in the past and set directives for avoiding similar missteps in the future.

The Senate seeks to avoid missteps on Supreme Court nominees.

Late in the book, the author turns to a discussion of how he tries to avoid missteps.

But these investors must work hard to avoid missteps; a lot of the offerings have been neglected for good reason.

He has also been more disciplined in choosing his subjects and avoiding missteps.

Both sides appeared to be running out the clock in the last three days of the race and sought to avoid last-minute flare-ups and missteps.

The success of this operation involves more than 70 steps and is controlled by a sequence monitoring system to avoid missteps.

This can be clumsy and confusing to both parties, and understanding the concept of protean signals is useful for avoiding such missteps.