An overview of all possible terms denoting wooden tablets indicates that few can be regarded as positive evidence. As a result, it is argued that wooden tablets played a secondary and even modest role in scribal communication. There is also no real evidence for the theory that they were inscribed in hieroglyphs instead of cuneiform. The strong Luwian character of the terms discussed reinforces the picture of a Luwian speaking population in the chancellery. Other issues discussed here are the objects often identified as styli and assumed to be used for writing hieroglyphs, the cursivization of the hieroglyphic script, and Hittite terms for writing.

The thousands of bullae and other objects impressed with seals found in the Hittite capital Hattusa have thus far been interpreted, almost exclusively, as related to wooden tablets. The seal impressions contain the names and very often also the titles of kings and high-ranking officials allegedly witnessing royal decisions recorded on the wooden tablets that were lost in fires that destroyed the buildings where they were kept. Such buildings would have housed the state archives of the Hittite kingdom. This theory leaves a lot of essential questions unanswered. Instead, using Neo-Assyrian and later parallels, it is proposed that these collections of sealings were used as reference collections to check the authenticity of a seal and to detect forgeries. Seal forgeries were common in the ancient Near East and checking earlier impressions from the same persons was the only way to verify the authenticity of incoming sealed documents and goods.