Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2009

On May 7, 4:20 am, balou...@gmail.com wrote:

Sure.
Of course one must have a clause to indicate the belief,
like S = (e.g.) 'Strunk and White is a load of bullshit',
as well as a complementizer to introduce it, like 'that'.

It is believed/said by many that S
It is believed/said by some that S
They say that S
Some say/believe that S
One might believe/say that S
Everybody thinks/knows/believes that S
Almost everybody thinks/believes/that S
Quite a few people think/believe that S.

... and so on.  These are not all identical in
their implications, but they're all grammatical
and they all can occur in much the same
situations, depending on what the speaker
wants to imply.

Note that 'say' and 'believe', while strictly
speaking not at all synonymous, nevertheless
both get used here with much the same sense,
since one only finds out what others think
by what they say (assuming one trusts them
not to lie about it).

BTW, what do you want these for?
Not homework, I hope.

-John Lawler                   http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
 "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of,
  but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
                                          -- Robert A. Heinlein