Credit Where Credit Is Due

The year was 1989. I was just out of college and still job searching when I read a want ad in the local newspaper: Seeking Creative Assistant.

When they asked me to bring samples of my work to the interview, I wasn’t sure what I could show them — I’d just been working at a coffee shop making donuts up until then.

So I sorted through my school papers, thought about what a Creative Assistant might be asked to do, and gathered my samples: a 50-page research project on popular magazines at UMass in 1987, an essay about summer people in Connecticut, copies of the high school newspaper I’d edited, and some photos of my annual summer parties, including the most recent Christmas in July.

It was the photo of a friend hanging cotton-ball snow for the Christmas party that got me the job, or so Margaret Sprague told me later.

Margaret was the owner of Two Ems, Inc. in Madison, Connecticut, and one of the first rock stars I ever met! 🌟

She started Two Ems in 1980, around the time she was publishing Amie, an award-winning magazine for women on the Connecticut shoreline. By 1989, the business had grown to include a long list of services — public relations, publishing, graphic design, printing — management of the Madison Chamber of Commerce, and a staff of 10 part- and full-time employees (including their new Creative Assistant).

If you asked her about the name of the business — and its double square/double M logo — she would explain how an “em” was a printing term that referred to a unit of measurement in typography.

The term came from the width of the letter “M” in a given typeface. That’s why it’s called an “em.” Back in the days of metal type, each letter was cast on a small block of metal. The width of the capital “M” was roughly equal to the average size of the type and could be used as a standard unit for spacing and layout.¹

So an “em” was an important term for communicating with typesetters and printers about margins, indents, and other spacing concerns.

As a woman working in the late 70s and early 80s, Margaret believed that putting this knowledge front-and-center in her business name would give her credibility in the male-dominated world of printing and publishing.

Then she’d tell you, with a sly smile, that her maiden name was Molitor, so Two Ems was a double entendre, hiding in plain sight!

Two Ems was an anchor in Madison for more than 40 years — transforming from a public relations and communications company to a treasured downtown business that provided publishing, printing, and retail services for the shoreline.

According to her recent obituary, in addition to Two Ems, Margaret had varied interests and enjoyed volunteering, often in leadership roles, for the church and many service organizations, including Phi Mu Fraternity, the American Association of University Women, the Deacon John Grave Foundation, the Madison Historical Society, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Connecticut Girl Scouts. She created and published a lifestyle magazine for women, produced her own television show on community cable access, and wrote and presented first-person historical accounts to teach new generations about the lives of influential American women.

You can read more about her here, in The Source’s 2015 Person of the Week article “Margaret Sprague: Destroyer of Gender Barriers.”

That’s what I mean by rock star!

It’s no coincidence that the list of services listed in a Two Ems brochure from 1990 is almost identical to the services I offer my Words by Jen clients today. While I only worked for Margaret a mere two years, I learned so much of what I know now from her and my time at Two Ems: the hieroglyphics of proofreading marks, desktop publishing in Pagemaker on a Mac, how to write a proper press release and design an effective ad. She even encouraged my first foray into publishing, my zine The Latest News.

Truth be told, I would not have been able to do what I do now were it not for those early days at Two Ems with Margaret at the helm. There was a clever creativity about Two Ems, and about Margaret herself, that I have and always will admire.