Some conceptual clarity

[gaurav_a_rathi]

I can see what you're saying here, but nouns that are modified by prepositional phrases can still be the referent of 'which' even if they are a few words distant from it.
This usually happens when the immediately preceding noun is grammatically incompatible with the verb after "which".

For example: "The picture of my brothers, which was taken last year in Mexico, is one of my favorites."

You might object to this sentence on the grounds that 'which' might be taken to modify 'brothers'. And, in a strict sort of way, you'd be right. But here's the catch: There's really no other reasonable way to write this sentence. You just can't get 'picture' next to the 'which' clause without creating total nonsense, or splitting the sentence into 2 smaller sentence-ettes.
plus, 'brothers' is plural, and is incompatible with 'which WAS'.

This is an interesting point, though, and subtle at that. I believe that we are working on getting it into our forthcoming strategy guide.

The above statements were found in a post by Ron.
Ref: post4622.html#p4622

I don't understand the statements in bold.
Is that a good reason to consider the statement to be right?

Manhattan may also consider changing the first bold sentence on page 91 in SC guide edition 4.1 (The explanation in bold above is contradictory to the bold sentence in the SC guide)

[jnelson0612]

I can see what you're saying here, but nouns that are modified by prepositional phrases can still be the referent of 'which' even if they are a few words distant from it.
This usually happens when the immediately preceding noun is grammatically incompatible with the verb after "which".

For example: "The picture of my brothers, which was taken last year in Mexico, is one of my favorites."

You might object to this sentence on the grounds that 'which' might be taken to modify 'brothers'. And, in a strict sort of way, you'd be right. But here's the catch: There's really no other reasonable way to write this sentence. You just can't get 'picture' next to the 'which' clause without creating total nonsense, or splitting the sentence into 2 smaller sentence-ettes.
plus, 'brothers' is plural, and is incompatible with 'which WAS'.

This is an interesting point, though, and subtle at that. I believe that we are working on getting it into our forthcoming strategy guide.

The above statements were found in a post by Ron.
Ref: post4622.html#p4622

I don't understand the statements in bold.
Is that a good reason to consider the statement to be right?

Manhattan may also consider changing the first bold sentence on page 91 in SC guide edition 4.1 (The explanation in bold above is contradictory to the bold sentence in the SC guide)

Tell me more about what you don't understand. Ron is saying that we just *can't* put the "which" next to "picture" while still keeping a logical construction in the sentence. I have found that there are some exceptions to the "which" touch rule; check out Ben's post in this thread: sentence-correction-chapter-7-problem-set-question-5-t8151.html

I just looked at the bold statement on page 91. It says that the "which" must refer to the noun immediately before it. However, any noun that is part of a prepositional phrase isn't really a "noun" for modifier purposes. You are still modifying the noun that is described by the prepositional phrase.