In addition to using Mark Hubbard’s “Thank you in advance for [keeping me informed]” (or just “Thanks in advance for [ … ]” in less formal situations) to express your thanks in advance without having to rely on context, you could also consider using a near-synonym for being thankful to use with the conditional would, for example:
“I would (I’d)[ greatly/very much] appreciate your keeping me informed.”
or (to emphasize the conditional notion even further):
“I’d be [extremely/very] grateful if you would (you’d)/could keep me informed.”
(Please note that, although it’s probably overstating the actual level of appreciation/gratitude, I think I would include greatly and extremely, especially in the above, “in advance” cases, but probably less so in the “after the fact” cases mentioned below. However, be careful not to “over-do” it because you could come across as being sarcastic or “sycophantic” [the English sense!], so on second thought, maybe the more restrained very/very much would be better in these cases where intensifying the gratitude might be in order because you are actually requesting a future favor at the same time.)
Regarding “after the fact” expressions of thankfulness (such as the one you made on “Overflow” and are asking about here), in addition to Mark’s use of the past tense (provided) or relying solely on context (which I agree can be ambiguous, especially in your example where it could easily be interpreted as an on-going request), you could consider changing “keeping” to “having kept” and “keep” to “kept” to use either with the same near-synonyms above (but in the unconditional present) or else (preferably, I think) simply with the original “Thank you/Thanks” construction, for example:
“I [do] [greatly/very much] appreciate your having kept me informed.”
(where the do would be an optional way to emphasize the appreciation)
“I am (I’m) [extremely/very] grateful that you kept me informed.”
Thank you (Thanks) for having kept me informed.
(But please see this relevant Word Reference thread that seems to confirm that we are, in fact, often (but not always?) at the mercy of sometimes ambiguous context in English (as indicated in user3169's answer). At least “Kelly B” begins his/her answer with “Yes, that's right,” so making the effort in our own speech to avoid the ambiguity would be not only admirable, but also grammatically and logically correct, although we'd still have to rely on context to interpret the meaning when spoken to us by somebody who is less concerned with clarity.)
It's nobody's business but the Turks why Constantinople got the works.
It only concerns the Turks that the name Istanbul was given to the city that had been called Constantinople.
To get the works is very old US slang. It means generally to be the victim of something. To be in a very bad situation as the result of some action. Often used as: to give someone the works. To put the person into a difficult situation when the person has done something bad to another person.
The songwriter is describing the change in name from Constantinople to Istanbul. The Turkification of Turkish names (under Attaturk) is a complex subject. However, one needn't know much about it to understand what the songwriter meant here.
The use of the expression here "get the works" is really being used more as a rhyme with Turks than any historical truth.
Best Answer
This phrase means that the reason that "that" happened, is because of you. We can use the phrase to mean:
However, you need to be a bit careful, because sometimes we use this phrase sarcastically, or idomatically to mean that something is somebody's fault!
So, if you want to use this phrase to show that you appreciate something somebody did, you need to make sure they won't think your blaming them for something!
Hope this is helpful!