Punctilious means attending exactly to every small point of correctness. Punctilious about form.
It is admiring where fussy is not, and the difference is whether the small points matter. A punctilious person is the one you want checking a contract and not planning a party.
1adjectivepunctiliousAttending exactly to every small point of correctness.
“He was punctilious about every date and careless about everything else.”
punctilious is a quality.
From punctilio + -ous.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA