defects of form

You continue to turn the pages, one after another, because this novel, whatever its defects of form, whatever its excess, lives on the page.

Colonel Sproule looked up abruptly and said to Moore, "I find no defects of form."

Titles issued in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine under the colonial administration often suffered from defects of form (for example, lacking an imprint of the colonial seal), and most of them did not include a quit-rent payment.