Q're perpetuum
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A Q're perpetuum or standing Q're is a technical orthographic device to indicate the pronunciation of certain words in the masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The masoretes inherited a form of the Biblical text written in the consonantal letters of the Hebrew alphabet (with only a very limited and ambiguous indication of vowels by means of matres lectionis), and never altered this basic consonantal text when they annotated it with the written vowel diacritic symbols which they invented. However, sometimes the masoretes preferred a different reading of a word than that found in the pre-masoretic consonantal text. In this case, they wrote the vowel diacritics of their preferred reading in the main text (added around the consonantal letters of the masoretically-disapproved variant), with a special sign indicating that there was a marginal note for this word. In the margins there would be a note indicating the consonant letters of the preferred masoretic reading. Here the preferred masoretic reading is known as the Q're (Aramaic קרי "to be read"), while the pre-masoretic consonantal spelling is known as the Ketibh (Aramaic כתיב "to be written"). In such cases, the vowel points of the Q're were separated from the consonant letters of the Q're — but they were meant to be read together (even though the vowel points of the Q're are located on the consonant letters of Ketibh).
A "perpetual" Q're differs from an ordinary Q're in that there is no note marker and no accompanying marginal note — these are certain commonly-occurring cases of Q're/Ketibh in which the reader is expected to understand that a Q're exists merely from seeing the vowel points of the Q're in the consonantal letters of the Ketibh.
For example, in the Pentateuch, the third-person singular feminine pronoun היא hī is (for some unknown reason) commonly spelled the same as the third-person singular masculine pronoun הוא hū. The masoretes indicated this situation by adding a written diacritic symbol for the vowel [i] to the pre-masoretic consonantal spelling h-w-' הוא (see diagram). The resulting orthography would seem to indicate a pronunciation hiw, but this is meaningless in Biblical Hebrew, and a knowledgeable reader of the Biblical text would know to read the feminine pronoun hī here.
Many scholars hold the view that "Yehowah" (or in Latin transcription "Jehovah") is a pseudo-Hebrew form which was mistakenly created when Medieval and/or Renaissance Christian scholars misunderstood the common Q're perpetuum of the partial vowel points of Adonai written together with the consonants of the Tetragrammaton YHWH (in order to indicate that written YHWH should be pronounced aloud as "Adonai", as was the usual Jewish practice at the time of the Masoretes). This would be a mistake of exactly the same type as reading hiw for the Q're perpetuum of the third-person singular feminine pronoun.
