One small step for (a) man!

Posted on July 20, 2009
Filed Under news |

Today is the 40th anniversary of our moon landing. Who can forget the first sentence uttered on the lunar surface? “One small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind”. Unfortunately, astronaut Neil Armstrong flubbed the rehearsed speech in front of millions of television viewers due to the excitement. What he actually said was “One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind”. The meaning of the rehearsed speech was to convey that the small step taken by Armstrong was a giant leap in terms of space exploration for all of humanity. But, by ommiting the article ‘a’, the entire meaning of the sentence was changed.

Obviously, this does not take away anything from the marvelous achievement of mankind. But definitely goes to show the importantance of a properly placed article in a sentence!

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