The Declaration of Independence, _____ primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, remains among the most influential documents in American history.

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• The Declaration of Independence,
•                           [?] primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776,
•          remains among the most influential documents in American history.
• 
  Where [?] varies between: drafting / to draft / drafted / drafts

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

'The Declaration of Independence'

• This is what the sentence is about - our main subject.

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank:

• '_____ primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776'
• This phrase sits between commas, right after our subject.

Let's look at our choices:

• We're deciding between different forms of the verb "draft"
  • drafting
  • to draft
  • drafted
  • drafts

To see what works here, let's read the rest of the sentence:

• 'remains among the most influential documents in American history'

What do we notice about the structure here?

• 'Remains' is the main verb of the sentence
  • It's telling us what the Declaration does right now - it remains influential
• So the phrase with our blank must be something else
  • It's a descriptive phrase that adds extra information about the Declaration
  • It's set off by commas, sitting between the subject and main verb

Now let's look at that phrase again: '[blank] primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776'

The key signal here is 'by Thomas Jefferson':

• When we say something was done "BY" someone, we're describing an action that was done TO the thing (the Declaration)
• The Declaration didn't draft itself - it was drafted BY Jefferson
• This means we need the past participle form: drafted

So we need Choice C: drafted.

The complete meaning is:

• The Declaration of Independence (which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1776) remains one of the most influential documents in American history.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Using Past Participles in Descriptive Phrases with "By"

When you want to add descriptive information about something that had an action done TO it, you use the past participle form of the verb (called a passive construction in grammar terms). The key signal is "by [who did it]" - this tells you who performed the action.

The pattern looks like this:

Structure: Subject, [past participle] by [who did it], main verb

Example 1:

• The novel, written by Toni Morrison in 1987, won the Pulitzer Prize.
  • Subject: The novel
  • Descriptive phrase: written by Toni Morrison in 1987
  • Main verb: won

Example 2:

• The bridge, designed by innovative engineers, spans over 2 miles.
  • Subject: The bridge
  • Descriptive phrase: designed by innovative engineers
  • Main verb: spans

In our question:

• The Declaration of Independence, drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, remains among the most influential documents.
  • Subject: The Declaration of Independence
  • Descriptive phrase: drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson in 1776
  • Main verb: remains

The "by" phrase tells you that someone performed an action ON the subject, which requires the past participle form of the verb.