pedantic

It's told in a joke, so it makes the point without being pedantic about it or anything like that.

But as the motley group of Colorado voters who brought the case against Trump put it, you have to engage in “pedantic wordplay” to not apply Section 3 to Trump.

After a slightly pedantic exchange about wording, she conceded this meant she had deleted them.

Look at his mom, and the town, and the pedantic and myopic thinking.

There was no TV, save a lone, uninspiring black-and-white channel; the young read books and listened to music, while most papers and magazines were pedantic and mundane.