it didn't register.

[yurenjimeng]

Topic sentence: She told me her telephone number, but it didn't register.
Copied from original title. Cagey, moderator

Should we change this sentence to "...but it wasn't registered"?

 

[Uncle Jack]

Where is this from? What is the context? Was the narrator expecting (or hoping) to recognise the telephone number?

 

[yurenjimeng]

It's taken from Practical English in Phases. There isn't any more context.

 

[SevenDays]

Should we change this sentence to "...but it wasn't registered"?

"Should" questions need context, and we don't have context.

"but it wasn't registered" begins to sound as the passive voice with no explicit agent, meaning that "someone" didn't put the phone number in some sort of list/register. This is the verb "register" in the sense of "put information on a list."

"but it didn't register" means that the phone number didn't stay in my mind, for whatever reason. This is the verb "register" in the sense of "not holding in the mind." "Doesn't/didn't register" is, to me, an idiom.

And so there is change in meaning, as to which meaning should be used, that can only be answered in context.

 

[LVRBC]

We should not change the sentence, unless we want to change the meaning.
"Didn't register" refers to both recognition and recall, and is an idiom. It does not mean "I was unable to memorize it."
For example: "She told me her phone number but it didn't register (on me that it was actually the local police station's number.)"
It's an odd statement to make about a phone number, in any case, since most people cannot remember a number that long on first hearing. Unless perhaps the sentence comes from some historical period when there were phone numbers like TH(ornwall) 867.

 

[yurenjimeng]

Thanks