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).
