In addition to the three global traditions, other more local traditions exist. A shared feature across textual traditions is the desire to transmit knowledge to posterity. Therefore, hard and durable surfaces such as stone, bone, and metal have been used all over the world, and often such inscriptions are the main source to study a culture. See the copper plates, cuneiform clay tablets, wood, bamboo, and conch shell for examples of such durable materials. One should also not forget that not all information transmission uses the writing of language, as is seen here in a khipu, a set of knotted strings.

Other surfaces or materials are highly localized, used in different places and rarely entering wider use, such as texts on various forms of bark.