half of the 2nd century, and even into the 3rd century. Greek text The papyrus is written on both sides and hence must be from a codex, a sewn and folded book, not a scroll, roll or isolated sheet; and the surviving portion also includes part of the top and inner margins of the page. The recto consequently preserves the top left corner of a right-hand page; while the verso preserves the top right corner of a left-hand page. The characters in bold style are the ones that can be seen in Papyrus 𝔓. The recto text comes from the Gospel of John 18:31–33: Eleven lines of the text are lost, containing 18:34–36. The text translates as: The verso text comes from the Gospel of John, 18:37–38: The text translates as: There appears insufficient room for the repeated phrase () in the second line of the verso, and it is suggested that these words were inadvertently dropped through haplography. The writing is generously scaled – letter forms vary between in height, lines are spaced approximately apart, and there is a margin of at the top. It can be determined that there were 18 lines to a page. C. H. Roberts commented: ".. to judge from the spacing and the size of the text, it is unlikely that the format was affected by considerations of economy". There are no apparent punctuation marks or breathings shown in the fragment; but the diaeresis is applied to an initial iota at both the second line of the recto and the second line of the verso; and possibly too on the first line of the recto. Taken together with the over-scaled writing, this suggests that the manuscript may have been intended for congregational reading. If the original codex did indeed contain the entire text of the canonical Gospel of John, it would have constituted a single quire book of around 130 pages (i.e. 33 large folded papyrus sheets written on both sides); measuring approximately when closed. Roberts noted a glued vertical join in the papyrus slightly inside the inner margin and visible on the verso, indicating that the large sheets used for the codex were likely to have been specially prepared for the purpose, each having been constructed from two standard sized sheets measuring approximately , with a central narrower sheet approximately constituting the spine. Roberts describes the handwriting as "heavy, rounded and rather elaborate",