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The Cutest Spelling Error Ever in a Funny Novel

December 5, 2025

I just finished reading Paul Rudnick’s 2023 novel Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style. Like the Washington Post’s critic, I found it to be delightful. It was consistently funny and, at times, touching. It also had the cutest spelling error on page 214 of the paperback edition.

Instead of calling the grumpy farmer “crotchety,” the sentence starting with “I was like” implies he does a lot of crocheting.

The novel was otherwise well copyedited. The only other error I spotted as I was reading (without purposefully looking for issues) was an extra closing single quotation mark on page 220.

The quotation mark after either “new” or “Julian” should be deleted. Probably the one after “new.”

Good Wine, Wrong Preposition →

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