What does it mean to have a pedantic writing style?

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I'm confused when it comes to pedantic. I know it means the same thing as academic, but without an example, I don't know how a pedantic writing style looks like. Can anyone--and I mean anyone--give me an example of a pedantic style, regardless if it's a sentence or a paragraph?

I'm not sure if it's an exact synonym for academic. From what I remember, it means rigid or stylized, boilerplate, etc. Check with the dictionary, either at home or online.

Pedantic means overwrought with rules and form, not academic.

It doesn't mean exactly the same as academic, although academic writing styles can indeed by pedantic (although not always - depends on the subject). You can be pedantic in the way you write fiction, or the way you chat on a forum. I am described as pedantic - and the way I'm writing here would be seen by some as pedantic, and in fact I'm deliberately trying to do my pedantic style more than normal, so you can see it. See how I try to logically distinguish here between 'academic' and 'pedantic' and all the possible combinations - I try to be exhaustive in the explanation, and I spell things out where it is probably not always necessary.

Also, pedantic, in a forum setting, might be if someone said something where they weren't quite exact, but everyone knew what they meant, and then someone corrected them. The correction would be pedantic, because the meaning was clear even though the exact words weren't accurate. Pedantic is focusing on the tiny details and not on the big picture - which is a typical autistic thing to do. And it's likely that people might get irritated with the pedantic person and tell him he was pedantic, and he would argue back that he was being accurate and that accuracy is important - and that argument too would be seen as pedantic, because a non-pedantic person would just let it go and not care.

A further pedantic thing to do would be to answer a simple question in great and probably unnecessary detail, as I have done here, and to then link to a further definition, which I will also do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantic. Note how it describes how pedantry is related to autism. (Another example of pedantry is that I first wrote 'pedanticness' and then thought it looked wrong and then checked in my dictionary to see what the word should be, and then changed it to 'pedantry'!). People get very annoyed with this style of writing, by the way, because they think it is far too much unnecessary detail. People are often annoyed with me when I write like this!

Does that mean that being a pedant means that you ramble about a subject as if you were an intellectual? I might have a pedantic style. For example, most of my essays are longer than my classmates; moreover, my fiction is many more pages longer than my classmates as well. I use words that, to someone reading it, would seem like I'm educated. I also wirte in long sentences and vary my sentence structure, but I usually write in long sentences since I'm a detailed person. Would that examplation be the reason why I'm pedantic?

I haven't heard of it meaning rambling. It would be more if you were clarifying things with great detail, and making sure to be thoroughly comprehensive and unambiguous - that can make you use a lot more words, but it isn't the same as being rambling. Rambling means you have no real purpose or sense of where you're going with what you're saying.

And yes, if you are thinking about your sentence structure and trying to vary it, that can come across as stilted and forced, which people might describe as pedantic.

Your use of the word 'moreover' here might be seen as pedantic, because it is a bit out of place in a forum, where the 'norm' of writing is conversational (at least in NT forums). Pedantic is often when people use a structure that would be correct in a formal setting in an informal setting, where it is seen as inappropriate. It can be the inability to vary one's style according to context (another common aspie thing).

Pedantic in regards to writing style means the writer seemed to go out of their way to use big words and generally lacked succintness. George Orwell (the real one) wrote an essay attacking pedantic writing, and notably Huxley was also very opposed to such writing styles.

If you need an example of pedantic writing, I can pull out some essays I wrote in my junior year of high school and put them on here.

so to do something demi-buttocked would be pedantic, as opposed to half-a**ed...

Orwell isn't attacking pedantry. He's attacking pretentiousness in writing. Such as using long words when a short one works equally well. Pedantry is something different, at least in all the ways I've seen it used. Pretentiousness (what Orwell is talking about - and the word he uses) is when people are trying to look clever and educated - showing off. Pedantry is when people are trying to be totally exact, and follow the rules to the letter, and 'splitting hairs'.

The two often look quite similar in writing.

That is very true. Although one can also be pedantic using short Anglo-Saxon words - and even to argue pedantically for the usage of such words over the longer Latin/Greek ones! One could argue that Orwell's own essay is pedantic in that regard, because it is so very detailed and thorough, and gives so many examples which it analyses in great depth.

Yes, you are correct. Although you are being rather pedantic about the whole thing.