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Remember the “it” when using “appreciate”

We can use "appreciate" to ask and to thank. However, people often forget to add "it" when using "if" in a polite request.

We can say:

I’d appreciate some help with this project.

I’d appreciate your feedback on this idea.

We’d appreciate having some more time to work on this.

But when using if in a request, then we also need to use it:

I’d appreciate it if you could help me with this project.

I’d appreciate it if you’d give me some feedback on this idea.

We’d appreciate it if we had some more time to work on this.

A modal verb such as could or would is often used and sometimes a past verb form to make the request more distant and so more polite.

Hope this quick reminder helps and you can find some other common confusions herehereand here.

And I’d appreciate it if you could let me know what other words or structures you find confusing so we can deal with those too.

© Christina Wielgolawski