ped·ant n.
1. One who pays undue attention to book learning and formal rules.
2. One who exhibits one's learning or scholarship ostentatiously.
3. Obsolete A schoolmaster.

"Undue attention" depends on the context. A shop owner must criticize an emplyee who writes "Potatoe's 89cents a pound" for reasons of orthography; a customer had better ponder on the price.

Dan Quayle did do some politics, didn't he?