The debate seems to have started anew with this post on The Hairpin, where the writer Kelly Conaboy makes a case for “red.” But this question about “read receipts” and pronunciation has come up before-kind of a lot, actually. Teens Aren't Ruining Language Adrienne LaFrance Also, “gif” has a soft “g,” like giraffe. But there was solid logic on team “reed,” too: Just think of it like a “repair receipt,” or “pay stub,” or “mailing receipt,” none of which are in the past tense even though they indicate an activity that’s already taken place. Team “red” had a compelling case: A read receipt is a receipt that’s generated once the text message has been read. (I asked folks on Facebook and Twitter for their opinions and received similarly passionate yet inconclusive responses.) Our dialogue never reached the proportions of the Great Dark Chocolate Debate of last week, but we still never reached a consensus. This was the subject of a brief but dizzying newsroom back-and-forth on Monday among colleagues who insisted that one or the other was definitely, absolutely, without question the right way. The other common question about read receipts is this: How do you pronounce the term? Do you say it in the past-tense, so it sounds like “red”? Or in the present tense, so it sounds like “reed”? Or, to use “read receipt” in a typical sentence: “ Why does anyone keep ‘read receipts’ turned on?” It doesn’t mean that’s what everybody’s always reading.)Īll of this text and the ways in which it’s disseminated is changing the way we relate to words-and to one another.Ĭonsider, for instance, the curious case of the “read receipt.” You know, the little notification that pops up for the sender of a text message once the recipient of that message has opened (and ostensibly read) the text. (Well, the quality stuff’s out there, anyway.
#Read receipts iphone tv
The ubiquity of the web has created a golden age of text much the way it’s enabled a golden age of TV and journalism (golden for the consumer, anyway): More options at a user’s fingertips, many of them freely accessible, means tougher competition-which drives up quality. In an era of internet-connected smartphones, it’s possible to read more than ever-and not just books or news reports (which were always portable) but also dispatches from friends and family that now come via Facebook or text message instead of by speaking over the phone, as they might have in the pre-internet age. Despite what you’ve heard about the blossoming age of mobile video and emoji-based discourse, people under the age of 30 are reading more books than their counterparts in decades past, and readers of all ages are increasingly reaching for a variety of platforms-cellphones, tablets, and laptops, along with good ole-fashioned paper. It just means you often learn new words through reading rather than hearing.Īnd Americans are reading like crazy these days (hey, you’re doing it right now). Mispronouncing words, a generous friend of mine recently reminded me, isn’t necessarily a sign of dilettantism.