Colour coded Quran: how the tajweed colours work

What the colours usually mean

Colour schemes vary between publishers, but most follow the same families of colour:

Colour family	Rule	What it marks	Learn the rule
Shades of red, orange or pink	Madd: the long vowels	Darker shades usually mean longer, obligatory lengths; lighter shades the permitted ones.	Madd in tajweed
Green	Ghunnah: nasal sounds	Noon and meem with shaddah, ikhfa, and idgham with ghunnah.	Ghunnah
Blue	Heavy letters and qalqalah	Many editions mark the heavy (tafkheem) ra or the qalqalah letters in blue tones.	Qalqalah
Grey or light colour	Letters that are written but not pronounced	Silent alifs, the lam of al- before a sun letter, and merged letters.	Lam shamsiyyah

Read the key in your own copy first. The exact shade for each rule differs between editions, and some editions mark rules others leave in black.

What the colours do not show

• How a letter sounds: the colours never mark makharij or sifat, which are the source of most clear mistakes.
• Where to stop: stops still come from the stop signs above the line.
• Choices you make: where a madd may be read at two, four or six counts, the colour cannot tell you which length you chose, only that a choice exists.

Using a colour coded Quran well

1. Learn one colour at a time. Spend a week noticing only the ghunnah colour, then add madd.
2. Say the rule out loud when you see a colour, so you understand it rather than react to it.
3. Practise on a plain mushaf too. Once you know the rules, read from an uncoloured copy to check you can apply them without the help; most mosques use plain copies.
4. Check the script. Colour-coded copies exist in both the Madinah (Uthmani) and IndoPak scripts; learn on the one you will read from. See the Uthmani script.

For a one-page summary of the rules the colours point to, print our tajweed rules chart, or read the full tajweed rules guide. In our tajweed course, the teacher works with whichever mushaf you have, coloured or plain.