Attend vs. Attend to

How to use "attend" and "attend to" correctly

This is an entry on my list of Common Errors in English Usage. Visit the main page for direct links to additional entries.

The verb attend is usually used to mean “to be present at, to participate in, to be enrolled in”:

attend a meeting

To attend to something is “to deal with” or “to focus one’s attention on”:

attend to a school
attend to a problem
attend to your studies

Common Errors in English Usage: Errors in diction and idiom commonly made by native speakers of English

List of Common Errors in English Usage (PDF): Printable version of the complete list

Common Grammar Errors: A list of common errors in grammar (topics like subject-verb agreement and parallelism) as distinct from usage