your final answer of "yes" is true.
Now I will add on to that correct answer.
The hot comes into the room, gets split by a switch. then on to the light.
therefore when you move the switch up or down, the light goes off or on.
Now that light, lets say, has another light right next to it. So now we start over.
the hot comes into the room, and feeds two switches. From each switch, they feed each light.Well to do that, I use a cable that has two wires going to the two lights.. One is red, and the other is black, because thats what the cable came with, built in.
Now lets start over again. But instead of two lights, we will make it a SUPER light, that has both lights within it.
Still, I want to switch one, and the other. Because I dont want it to be mega bright like that.
Well that "super light" is your ceiling fan. One wire went to a literal light, and the other went to a fan.
Well now I want to take down the fan, but leave my two wires for two lights.
One wire, I take and use it for some can lights... and the other one, I want to control a disco ball light!
there you have it.
well what about the neutral? that white wire..
Well the white wire, has zero to do with any of this. It has to be sitting up there at any light you have, waiting for you to add a "hot" wire that you brought up from a switch. (once you take a hot, and bring it to a switch, and emerge again, that wire heading up to the light is no longer called a "hot". its called a "switchleg)
If its passing through any box that has a switch, who cares, it will just bypass everything and head on up to the light, waiting for you to marry it with the light and the "switchleg"
I said all this so if things go crazy, or if you wanna do new things, yiou can use this.