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I wonder if you could let me know which one of the listed sentences below is more appropriate for thanking someone when the spend some time to help you?

Is there any uncommon or unidiomatic sentence between them that doesn't sound natural to you? If yes, please that explain me.

  • Thank you for spending your time helping / to help me me.
    - Thank you for putting your time helping / to help me.
    - Thank you for taking your time helping / to help me.

To me, all the sentences above mean the same, but I need to know what do you think about their connotations?

Thank you.

2 Answers 2

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Thank you for spending your time helping / to help me.

This is fine. Our time is ours to spend, so "spending your time" makes perfect sense.

Thank you for taking your time helping / to help me.

This is not quite right. We wouldn't say "taking your time", it should be:

Thank you for taking the time to help me

I guess you don't take something that is already yours. This expression "taking time" means buying out time to do something.

You could take "Putting your time" and use it like so;

Thank you for putting your time toward helping me / helping me out

Since you are putting your time somewhere, a directional word like "toward" completes the phrase.

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  • Thank you very much @Astralbee, just I need to make sure if "to put time is a tottaly unidiomatic verb or not; so please let me know whether I can say: "If you're going to succeed, you have to put more time/take more time/spend more time** for your studies"? According to what you mentioned, in this sentence, "put" version won't work at all; the version with "take" also doesn't work and the only possible verb would be "spend". Do you agree?
    – A-friend
    May 8, 2019 at 11:48
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    This pretty much gets the gist of it. But your missing a tiny bit of information. see "Putting the time to help" can be used in a different way, as you can use it as "Thanks you for Putting your time toward helping me out / helping me" May 8, 2019 at 12:05
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    @A-friend Taylor Spark's comment is correct and has been incorporated into my answer now - you can use "putting" but just not in the way you did, see my updated answer.
    – Astralbee
    May 8, 2019 at 12:11
  • Well @Astralbee, just to come to a conclusion, do you ahree that I can say: "spend the / your time, while I just can use "take the time"?
    – A-friend
    May 8, 2019 at 14:02
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In case you would like a more formal phrase, for instance used in a business context, a good alternative would be (GrammarHow):

Thank you for dedicating your time to our project

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