Learn English – Preposition: Pay attention in your studies

They are both basically the same sentence but there is a minor nuance between them.

1. He paid the expense This focuses on the fact that the expense, like a bill, has been paid.

2. He paid for the expense This could mean that he paid it, or that he paid it on behalf of another. The focus here is on the subject he doing the paying in order to clear the expense.

Like I said, this is merely a nuance- and frankly depending on the inflection of voice, either sentence could shift the meaning back to the subject or the verb. But minus any voicing, I would expect the emphasis to be as above.

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:

• I'm writing to bring [the unprofessional attitude of one of your staff members] to your attention.

This last clause has the same structure as:

• ... bring a friend to the party.