not one, but three, tens, hundreds

Most Indians, most Arabs, most Turks, think that all editions of the qurʾān are the same.
And they are right:
For 150 years most copies printed in Kara­tchi, Delhi, Dhakka, Johannis­burg are the same.
Since 1985 most printed east of Libya and west of Persia follow the ortho­graphy of the 1952 Egyptian state edition,
and most copies printed in Turkey (since 1950 ???) are practically identical.
Nevertheless, Gabriel Said Rey­nolds is completely wrong, when he states

the various editions of the Qur’an printed today (with only extra-ordinary excep­tions) are identical, word for word, letter for letter.
"Introduction" to The Qur'ān in its Histori­cal Context, Abingdon: Routledge 2008, p. 1

from left to right: Syrien, Qaṭar, Kuwait (al-Ḥaddād), Bahrain, Saudia, VAE (both UT1), Dubai, Saudia(UT2), Kuwait (UT1), Oman, Kerbala, Ägypten (Abu Qamar)

Yes, nowaday most maṣāḥif produced in the Arab mašriq are similar, but Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Turkey, Tarta­ris­tan, Brunai, Indo­nesia follow different rules, and the Indian Stan­dard (Pakistan, Bangla Desh, UK, South Africa, Surinam, Nepal, Ceylon) is numeri­cally more important and quite diffe­rent. "Nowadays" because before 1980 a Ottoman muṣḥaf written by Ḥafiz ʿUṭmān the Elder (1642‒1698) was pre­valent in Syria, and two Ottoman maṣāḥif written by Ḥasan Riḍā and Muḥammad ʾAmīn ar-Rušdī respectively were pro­duced for Dīwān al-Awqāf al-ʿIrāqī (still 1980 the govern­ments of Qaṭar and Saʿūdī ʿArabia had copies printed of the one based on Rušdī ‒ and 1415/1994 in Tehran): It took some seventy years before the 1924 edition had created a regional standard.

Because there are THREE well established standards and a few in Indonesia, a new one in Brunei, several (competing ones) in Iran and many all over Africa ‒ where we do not only find different ways of writing the same reading (Ḥafṣ ʾan ʿĀṣim) but three more trans­mis­sions (Warš, Qālūn, ad-Dūrī ʿan Abī ʿAmr). And 100 years ago, maṣāḥif were less stan­dardized.
There are many more printed in Damascus (or Bairūt because of the war), produced in ʿAmman and the UAE and pub­lished on the world wide web, but these are mainly for study, not for devotion.
But here I will not focus on the readings (and their trans­missions), but on different ortho­graphies (of the trans­mission Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim).
Already 35 years ago Adrian Alan Brockett found out that the 1342/1924 King-Fuʾād-Edi­tion had not estab­lished THE stan­dard, that even the suc­ces­sor of al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥad­dād as the chief reci­ter of Egypt ‒ hence main editor of the "second edition" of 1952 ‒ ʿAlī Muḥammad aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ (1304/1886-1380/1960), had edited different editions and approved of yet more dis­similar ones.

Brockett studied editions at a time when only Ḥafṣ and Warš were prin­ted.
Today one finds many edi­tions of Qālūn, some of Dūrī and both prin­ted ones and just pdfs for most of the others, plus many edi­tions about the 20 cano­nical trans­missions, plus sound files of reci­ta­tions of most trans­missions.       When Brockett wrote, the King Fahd Complex had not started to pub­lish dif­ferent vari­ants ‒ Ḥafṣ, Šuʿba, Warš, Qālūn, Dūrī, as-Sūsī writ­ten by ʿUṭmān Ṭāhā plus an Indian Ḥafṣ ‒ but he had no­ti­ced that Gulf States pub­lished a) in the new Egyp­tian style, b) an Ottoman muṣ­ḥaf (the muṣḥaf of M­uḥam­mad ʾAmīn ar-Rušdī with minor mo­di­fi­ca­ti­ons), c) in the Indian style.

1952:

Brockett's thesis is still the best English "book" avail­able on dif­ferences bet­ween copies of the qurʾān, al­though it was researched before the inter­net faci­li­tated research, before Uni­code made it easier to re­pro­duce Arabic script,
before it was easy to get hold of all the cano­nical trans­mis­sions and most of the thousands of variant readings (col­lected in three dif­ferent editions).
His main con­clu­sions ‒ the oral trans­mission and the one in writing re­in­forced each other, con­trolled each other, never were left with­out the other,
and there is no single standard of writing, and no single standard of reciting the qurʾān,
and the dif­feren­ces between trans­mis­sions (and within trans­missions) are minor, they never change the meaning of a para­graph ‒
stand intact. But it was a thesis, no published book.
Because the young student was not allowed to have it read by fellow researchers, it is full of mistakes,
mis­takes which would have been elimi­nated before pub­lication as a book.
I personally have no use for Brockett's "trans­literation", which is neither that nor a tran­scription.
I am sure that Brockett ‒ as many readers ‒ did not know what the two terms mean:
a trans­literation must render the Arabic letters faith­fully and must be rever­sible (not neces­sarily pro­nounce­able),
a transcription must render the sound of the words faith­fully, must be pro­noun­ce­able, should be read­able after some instruc­tion.
I personally, hate his termino­logy, but at least he defines his ‒ odd ‒ terms at the outset:
"graphic" means: part of the rasm,
"oral" means: not part of the rasm.
I say: utter nonsense!
Both the rasm and the later signs (dots, hamza, waṣl, shadda, fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma, signs for imāla, tasḥīl, išmām etc.) are gra­phical,
and have to be pro­nounced = are oral ‒ but there are some otiose letters, which have to be written in a real trans­literation (as in R-G Puin's).
"oral only" is closer to what he means, but "in the oldest manu­scripts not written, at that time: only recited" is it.
Sorry, "oral" is not good enough.
I hardly can read his "trans­cription". Why does "a wavy line" means some­times "oral", sometimes "lengthened"?
Anyhow, here and now, there is no need for Brockett's "trans­litera­tion", we have Arabic letters!
In spite of my criticism, his thesis is a great work of scholar­ship ‒ and tre­men­dous work, done before we just googled dif­ferent edi­tions of the qurʾān.
The content of this blog and my German one, you can find as book.