English-major alum Ronny Frith makes legislative language unimpeachable
Ronny Frith. Photo by Dwan Johnson.
MARCH 16, 2020 BY ABIGAIL MEISEL
Write clearly. Write concisely. Write for your audience.
For Ronny Frith ’74, these are words to live by. As a lawyer for the Legislative Services Office of the Mississippi House of Representatives, Frith drafts the bills and amendments that will be presented during each legislative session.
Every word and punctuation mark come under his scrutiny. He prepares and scours documents, checking ambiguity and potential loopholes, all the while ensuring that the writing is accessible to his audience—from the state’s highest judges to county clerks, police officers, and the general public.
“A bill could become a law and be on our books for 100 years, so writing clearly and concisely is important,” he said.
Frith credits his English major as laying the groundwork for a lifetime of skill in writing: from college to law school to the legislature.
“Unlike prose or poetry, you have to make sure that the words cannot be subject to different interpretations, that they’re being used in the same way from the first sentence through the last,” Frith said.
Throughout his long career—he joined the Legislative Services Office right after graduating from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1977—Frith has guarded against the unintended consequences of imprecise language.
“Take the word ‘municipality,’ that term can include a city and a town, so you have to make sure you understand exactly what that word means before using it in a bill draft,” he said.
Frith initially choose to study English because a high school teacher recommended it a good preparation for law school.
“Law school built on what I learned in college,” he said. “When you have four hours to write an exam that will be your entire grade, your skills in analysis, as well as clarity, are paramount. You have to distill what’s important and what’s not so that you can quickly organize your paper and clearly express ideas.”
When he entered law school, Frith noticed a difference between himself and those students who had little writing experience and struggled to put their ideas to paper.
“Writing didn’t intimidate me,” he said. “I’d written so many papers as an English major that I had confidence in what I was doing.”
Neither does rigorous editing—woe to the comma that gets in his way.
“If you take a comma out or put one where it doesn’t belong, it can make or break a case,” he said. “Sometimes I circle a comma in a bill draft and write a note to the proofreaders: ‘Do not remove.’”
He cites an infamous (in legal circles) case of an errant comma. In a Colorado criminal case, the state Attorney General argued that because of the placement of a single comma in a sentence of a statute, the defendant was not exempt from criminal prosecution. The judge did not agree, however, and the case was dismissed, freeing the defendant. His ultimate fate was determined by the punctuation of the sentence.
“Studying English was not just a way to get into law school,” he said. “I wanted to be a good lawyer, and English was a solid foundation for that.”
His advice to collegiate writers is succinct.
“Use your time as an undergraduate to develop your writing skills and vocabulary, and take as wide a variety of courses as you can to expand your knowledge.”