punctilious

Adjective

punctilious (comparative more punctilious, superlative most punctilious)

1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
   • With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
   • He was punctilious. According to those who worked with him, even his paperwork was the best they'd seen.2001 May 12, Robert Potts, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms:

   accurate, careful, surgical, comprehensive, solicitous, conscientious, exhaustive, fastidious, groundly, in-depth

2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
   • Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion.2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language
   • Every editor at Merriam-Webster deals with the Black Books at many points during their tenure. The Black Books are the in-house set of rules for writing a dictionary (commonly called a style guide) as conceived and written in punctilious detail by the former editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove, for...2017, Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Pantheon Books, page 103

   Synonyms:

   finicky, nitpicky, precise, accurate, careful, surgical, comprehensive, solicitous, conscientious, exhaustive