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I would appreciate it if you could help me with my homework.

Is the "it" optional?


Thanks.

Comments  
tamguatlayIs the "it" optional?

No, it is required, but it is often omitted in casual speech (to the discredit of the speaker).

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anonymous

See this:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=I+would+appreciate+it%2CI+would+appreciate+if&year_start=1550&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=20

The "it" is 14 times more likely to be used than the "if".

But if you use "I would appreciate it if", the version with "it" is only 7 times more likely. "I would appreciate it" is not an uncommon full sentence or sentence-ender.

anonymousNo, it is required, but it is often omitted in casual speech (to the discredit of the speaker).

When that happens, what a person is saying comes across as incomplete. That's like reading printed words and finding that someone has carefully used a scalpel to cut out one of those words. The resulting hole would be obvious.