The phrase "the common understanding" is correct and can be used in written English.
For example, "We all agreed that the common understanding is that the project should be completed by the end of the month."
Canadians love to police queues they are in for violations of the common understanding.
The common understanding of prison is that it is a place of deprivation and penance rather than domestic comfort.
Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon (Chatto, £20) brings humanity and great scholarship to the common understanding of depression.
This does not square, to put it mildly, with the common understanding of Catholic teaching.
The real work goes into the news release, which usually seeks to redefine the common understanding of the word "new".
"In the common understanding, the funds are not something that is going to support competitiveness," he said.
Instead, Mr. Bush referred repeatedly today to the "common understanding" between the United States and China about "the magnitude of the threat posed by international terrorism".
"Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet," he said.
"With emerging marks in a field that is changing quickly, you have to make a determination about what the common understanding is".
This notion of "rejected" is also in accordance with the common understanding of rejection of votes as used in other election cases.
But even among those who profess to know something about the subject, the common understanding is that Darwin said man came from monkeys.
