The phrase "a fateful step" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a decision or action that has significant and often negative consequences.
Example: "Deciding to invest all his savings in the failing company proved to be a fateful step that changed his life forever."
Alternatives: "a crucial decision" or "a pivotal move".
In an editorial yesterday titled "A Fateful Step Toward Court," The New York Times, which also had endorsed the vice president, concluded: "Presidential candidates have legal rights that are no stronger or weaker than those of any citizen.
Then, in 1996, Mr. Thioune took a fateful step: he moved his factory home to Senegal.
The United States ought not to take such a fateful step without a compelling justification and fervent conviction.
It is a fateful step in Iraq's current crisis, one that risks facilitating the long-term disintegration of Iraq.
Tymoshenko, meanwhile, would at the end of 1999 take what was for her and Ukraine a fateful step.
Bresnan, though, had taken a fateful step to his left and couldn't change direction quick enough – he threw out a hand but never looked like catching it.
In contrast to mainstream war comics of the 1950s like Sgt. Rock, which showed gritty Americans outwitting the outfighting the Germans and Japanese in the recently concluded World War II, an EC comic might have a story in which a dying soldier reflects on which random fateful step put him in the path of the bullet that killed him.
"This wonderful guy," he writes, "who happily stumbled through life, ignoring its pitfalls, was daydreaming away, composing his next poem or song, singing away to himself on his way to the station, when he took a fateful wrong step.
But I might say in passing that when someone makes the effort to become a dissident and joins the opposition and runs the risk of being persecuted, that fateful step has two positive aspects to it.
Certainly, it was Trajan who had taken the fateful step of entrusting the army of Syria to Hadrian.
The fateful step to dismiss him had enormous consequences for shareholders and plunged the company into a period of protracted management turmoil that seems to have been calmed only recently by the appointment of Meg Whitman as chief executive.
