Variability inherent to handwriting has been suggested to help establish more robust letter representations than other methods (e.g., typing). The present study tests whether encoding letter strings from a novel alphabet becomes more resistant to distortion when trained with variable input. Over 5 days, participants learned an 11-character artificial alphabet in a variable handwritten format involving reading, listening and handwriting practice. Another set of 11 artificial characters served as a visual control. Before and after the training, participants completed a masked priming same–different matching task with the novel alphabet letters. The key manipulation was in the primes: the identity/unrelated primes could be presented in a printed or distorted format. Results showed identity priming in both conditions, with a stronger effect for the printed primes. These effects increased post training for experimental and visual control scripts, indicating that exposure to variable input enhances distortion resistance even without explicit training. A second experiment assessed the transposed-letter effect – another marker of orthographic processing – in the novel scripts with an unprimed same–different matching task. Results showed that the transposed-letter effect occurred similarly before and after the training for both scripts. Therefore, letter shape variability when learning to read does not seem to boost orthographic processing.
