Relative pronoun question

[Guest]

i had a quick question regarding relative pronouns such as who, which, that, whose, whom, etc...

for relative pronouns that follow commas, does the relative pronoun always have to be next to the subject that it modifies?

for example:

"the students at the school, who have been sick, are feeling better."

when "who" is a relative pronoun does this sentence work or does 'who' have to be directly next to the word 'students'? is the fact that 'who' is next to school make this sentence grammatically incorrect?

[StaceyKoprince]

Most of the time, the noun immediately preceding the comma will be the noun that is modifed by the relative pronoun. There is an exception to this though (there's always one exception, isn't there?)...

You can have a short prepositional phrase following the noun (that is, between the noun and the comma) IF that short prepositional phrase is necessary to understand the meaning of that noun. I have to make sure that any nouns between the main noun (in the above case, students) and the comma are solely there to describe the main noun.

So if I had this option "That school's students, who have been sick, are feeling better" then I'd prefer to say it that way so I can have students right next to who. But if I didn't have such an option, then it would be okay to say "the students at that school, who have been sick, are feeling better" because I need to specify that I'm not talking about random students in general but specifically "students at that school" - this entire noun phrase describes the specific students I want to discuss.