How to Use punctilious in a Sentence

punctilious

adjective

• She's very punctilious about grammar.
• For a punctilious approach to plants on pergolas, allow the plants to grow a few, rather than just two, permanent cordons.
  — The Editors Of Organic Life, Good Housekeeping, 6 Feb. 2018
• There is also a more punctilious adherence to institutions among middle class of all stripes.
  — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 13 Feb. 2012
• Yet in the past three decades much of home-cooking culture has developed in revolt against what many see as Stewart’s punctilious ethos.
  — Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
• Talk-radio gurus in particular were punctilious keepers of the flame.
  — Mona Charen, National Review, 21 Sep. 2017
• Rather, the director and his lead actor, partners in life and art, have a punctilious approach where language is everything.
  — Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2018
• But party members must pay punctilious attention even to small changes in convoluted language.
  — Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Drexel, WSJ, 20 June 2021
• Rick is tightly scheduled, punctilious to a fault, endowed with verbal wit that gently but firmly shapes and smooths social interactions.
  — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 29 May 2026
• Rudolf, before he is eventually tasked with moving on to another camp, is a punctilious, contented autocrat.
  — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Dec. 2023
• Or not, because there was something Napoleonic about the ambition behind that infinitely punctilious façade.
  — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 21 July 2016
• Yet, even in his highly punctilious field, an influx of new, young litigators hits the workforce annually, pushing for more casual attire.
  — Jacob Gallagher, WSJ, 2 June 2021
• Once a devoted, punctilious maid in various upper-class households, Ellen Bunting now misses the security of her old life.
  — Michael Dirda, Washington Post, 21 Aug. 2019
• Though punctilious about his honor, in civilian life Poe normally comported himself with genteel courtliness.
  — Washington Post, 2 June 2021
• Her poise is the result of a loving yet punctilious upbringing by parents determined that their fame and its accompanying perks were not going to mollycoddle their two children.
  — Michael Callahan, Town & Country, 1 Aug. 2018
• Charitable work can be very boring, especially when recounted in punctilious detail.
  — Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 17 May 2018
• Eliminate the constant replays to create punctilious correctness.
  — Richard E. Vatz, Baltimore Sun, 15 June 2026
• His use of evidence, absorbed from vast archival sources and hundreds of interviews, is punctilious, his judgments measured, his wit dry and sympathetic, his prose classically balanced.
  — Benjamin Schwarz, New York Times, 12 Nov. 2019
• These days, Fireboy is a punctilious, perceptive artist, with a fiercely individualistic range.
  — Nelson C.j., Rolling Stone, 30 May 2022
• There is no punctilious demand for proofs, no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of the operators plotting in the shadows.
  — Bonnie Kristian, The Week, 19 Apr. 2022
• The prime status marker in a movement that has abjured financial reward is a reputation for punctilious (and often contrarian) intelligence.
  — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022
• Saban was different from Carroll, more punctilious but no less competitive or curious about defenses, with an unusually keen eye for identifying talent.
  — Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, 13 Jan. 2024
• American society, thin on formalities, exerts little pressure on solitary characters, whereas British life, which is more formal and punctilious, may add structure to lives that otherwise have little of it.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 13 Dec. 2022
• This penchant for punctilious, even occasionally preposterous, perfectionism led to an astronaut corps filled with compulsive checklist-checkers.
  — David Brin, Discover Magazine, 2 Jan. 2013
• Second, there was some objection to punctilious attention to scientific methodology, such as representativeness and sample size.
  — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 23 Apr. 2012
• But judging asylum claims on this standard has often been an exhaustive, slow and punctilious process, ascertaining the persecutor’s intent, verifying the claimant’s beliefs or identity at the root of the persecution and so on.
  — Bill Frelick, The Mercury News, 19 July 2024
• After each has gotten recently divorced, the slovenly, unkempt Oscar Madison (the breaker) and the punctilious neat-freak Felix Unger (the fixer) decide to share an apartment.
  — Gregg Opelka, WSJ, 28 Oct. 2022
• The deliberate creative process of Flores and Cázares, which involved heavy research and field study, underscores the punctilious practice of artisanal distillation passed down over generations.
  — Natasha Gural, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2023
• The punctilious attention to sensitivity in language in mass media often curtails candid discussions of policy options, even if those options are substantively not controversial.
  — Razib Khan, National Review, 12 Sep. 2020
• And indeed his investigations—conducted with the cooperation of le Carré himself, who is 84—take on now and again the character of a punctilious field officer’s debriefing of a wayward agent.
  — James Parker, The Atlantic, 6 Dec. 2015
• Steadfast in the conversational tone that Coen establishes for them, Washington and McDormand are punctilious in making their lines sound natural.
  — Los Angeles Times, 14 Jan. 2022