As in, “He was reading an adult magazine (read: porn).”
Is it pronounced reed, or red? I need to know for my “inner-pronunciation” in my head. Also, is there a name for this thing?
Am I making sense with these questions?
Present tense: reed. Past tense: red.
He was reeding an adult magazine (red: porn).
Bad example. I think you might see what I’m getting at, but a better example might be “His girlfriend decided they needed some time apart (read: he was dumped).”
In the present tense: I read the newspaper every morning - pronounced to rhyme with feed.
In the past tense: Yesterday I read the newspaper - pronounced to rhyme with head.
When used to mean “which really means”- read is reed, present tense. Even if the actions described occured in the past.
I say “reed” as in, “reed that last bit as:”.
I read (read: (whatever)) as “reed”. As in a command to read the previous statement in a particular way.
OK, well I see what you mean, but I’ve always assumed that that was past tense. Maybe not exactly past tense, I’m not an expert, but this is how I see it:
His girlfriend decided they needed some time apart (should be read: he was dumped).
I can tell there is a groundswell of support for me being wrong. 
I think I can give a better example than the OP, since I’ve had this question myself.
The symbol "+" (read "plus") is used to denote addition.
In the above sentence, is “read” an imperative or a past participle.
I can see pronouncing it either in the command form, or the “to be read” form. Hence my dilemna. Something makes me think there’s a proper way to say it.
This isn’t very helpful, but I think it’s “red” and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it spoken as “red.” But you know how it is with those things, you always feel sure you’ve heard it your way til you hear it the other way and then you can’t believe you’ve been backwards your whole life.
I pronounce it “reed.” (Note: my opinion only.)
Perhaps a reference book would be helpful. (See: style and usage guide.)
As it’s note and see, not noted or saw, the parallelism leads me to support reed, not red.
I consider it the command form, thus “reed.”
For what it’s worth:
An identical construction is used in Swedish, and in that case the imperative is used. So I tend to read ‘read’ as ‘reed’.
It’s direction to the reader (imperative), hence “reed”.
Another vote for pronouncing it as “reed” - it has never occurred to me that it could be otherwise.
Bah - Straight Dope - not only answers I would never have known, but now questions I had never thought of!
I’ll also go for “reed.” But when the colon is omitted, as in bitwise’s example “The symbol ‘+’ (read ‘plus’) denotes addition,” I think you need to use the past tense, pronounced as “red,” because the imperative interpretation really doesn’t hold up in that case.
Ok, but is a “read receipt” a “reed receipt” or a “red receipt”?
I can state categorically that the answer to the OP is “red”. Of course, I have no cite :o , but my reasoning is that the usage signifies the past-tense because the passage follows the original text. If the clarification preceded the text, then it would be “reed”.
Regardless of the majority opinion, I will always read read as read. 