I'm writing to bring to your attention the unprofessional attitude of one of your staff member.
(From a book and some online resources)
I feel like it should be:
I'm writing to bring your attention to the unprofessional attitude of one of your staff member.
Is it a typo or not? Thank you!
Best Answer
The image is that you are carrying something which needs attention and putting it in front of the listener. So you bring the thing to the listener - or to the listener's attention. In this image, you don't bring the attention to the thing.
The sentence is a bit more difficult to understand because the long noun phrase the unprofessional attitude of one of your staff members has moved from the normal Direct Object position. Because it is very long, the speaker has moved it to the end of the sentence (this is known as heavy noun phrase shift).
If we put the phrases in the normal order, the sentence looks like this:
This last clause has the same structure as: