Hrm. I'm annoyed with English today. The imperative, the past tense, and the present tense of "read" are identical. This makes it difficult to use that verb in an economical fashion.

"[I] [r]ead that as a negation of his prior position." "[I] [r]ead in the paper this morning that he's thinking about a second run at the office." "Read this statement put out by his campaign office - does that look like he's withdrawing from the race?"

This ambiguity creates a need for unnecessary verbosity. How can I be properly laconic with this sort of thing dragging me down into jabber? Bah.