The word "hairsplitting" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation in which someone focuses on small, unimportant details in order to gain an advantage, especially in an argument. For example, "He was accused of hairsplitting, as he was trying to use insignificant points to prove his case."
A hairsplitting decision allowed Catalans to continue claiming they belonged to a nation, while stating that the claim had no legal worth.
The film left no room for hairsplitting about provocation.
Obama administration officials justified this unwarranted expansion of surveillance powers with the usual hairsplitting arguments over semantics.
Instead, Romney has spent the last two weeks looking shifty and hairsplitting when he's on the defensive, and plaintive and whiny when he's gone on the attack.
Again, this is not hairsplitting.
(If you want to turn it on its head, around 60% haven't expressed a definite desire for a third-party keyboard. But that would be hairsplitting).
But that seems like hairsplitting in the face of an album that's idiosyncratic, varied, beautifully nuanced and compelling in a field filled with music that fades vaguely into the background.
The U.N. was a euphoric place in November, when, after two months of hairsplitting negotiation, all 15 members of the Security Council signed Resolution 1441, authorizing a toughened inspections regime in Iraq.
He complained that the administration's explanation -- that the agreement was not a binding international agreement that did not need to be submitted to Congress -- was "hairsplitting" that undermines public confidence in elected officials.
Ross was "by far the most painstaking, meticulous, hairsplitting detail-criticizer the world of editing has known" is every bit as much a Thurber sentence as its near-neighbor, "Ross sat on the edge of a chair several feet away from the table, leaning forward, the fingers of his left hand spread upon his chest, his right hand holding a white knitting needle which he used for a pointer".
It's coming up on Feb. 14 and this Harvard Law grad/Supreme Court clerk/Downtown law fir partner at 32 needs a killer workaholic corporate attorney to fill his daily spare 15 minutes with recondite leal hairsplitting.
