Originally the Hellenes, like the Phoenicians, wrote from right to left (epi ta laia), and without separating words and phrases. The letter sequence could take any direction, depending on the surface it was being written on. Thus circular and horseshoe-shaped inscriptions are found. Of course on flat surfaces the script that was predominant was the horizontal one. Very early on an innovative manner of continuous script started to be used: this was called boustrophedon. On reaching the end of the line, the inscription continued on the following line, but now in the reverse direction, exactly like the path followed by oxen when ploughing. Both these two methods were abandoned during the 6th century B.C., and the predominant script was that from left to right, which was more practical, since the great majority of human beings are right-handed. The separation of words started to be indicated by two or three dots in a vertical arrangement.

The surviving inscriptions of the Archaic period are found inscribed or painted on clay; carved in stone; or scratched on metal. These materials represent what could resist time, and it is self-evident that other, perishable materials - such as wood, hide, wax, or papyrus - were in wider use. The most popular method of writing must have been wooden tablets coated with wax, on which letters were written with the stylus and could easily be rubbed out and rewritten. Leukomata - wooden tablets with a coating of plaster - could be written on with the help of a colouring substance. Tying together two or more of such tablets enabled one to create, respectively, a diptych or polyptych, able to protect the writing and allow a confidential document to be sealed and secured.

The word deltos, which in Greek means a straightforward writing tablet, is of Semitic origin and one can reasonably conclude that the deltos in Greece was as old as the alphabet itself. Hide wrapped round a wooden rod, the so-called cylindros, was in widespread use in the Assyrian empire. Similar cylindroi were known in Greece in the 7th century B.C., as can be seen from a reference in Archilochus to the rod (skytale). The use of the word diphthera (skin) was so well entrenched in the vocabulary about writing that, according to Herodotus, even papyri were thus called. The latter were introduced into Greece either direct from Egypt or via Phoenician trading stations such as Byblos. This provenance led to the naming of papyrus in biblos and biblion. Its popularity as an accessible, though undoubtedly expensive, writing medium is evidently linked with the founding of the Hellenic colony of Naucratis in Egypt around 600 B.C. In the first years of writing, the leukoma and the hide, and subsequently the papyrus, must be regarded as the main materials for public records. Correspondingly, private writing makes its appearance in the same period, mainly on potsherds, and, we must assume, on wax tablets too, but these have not survived.