I ACCEPT that I am quite an anally-retentive person at times, but I think that I might have committed my most pedantic act yet.

It all started with a beautiful book, a really lovely hardback tome, in which people connected with the film industry explain what it is that they love about movies.

I spotted it in a bookshop, blanched a little at the £25 price tag, and thought, oh, I’ll treat myself to that whenever I get paid. After all, it’ll be one to treasure, a coffee table number to take pride of place in our home.

Come pay day, I bought it, headed home, boiled the kettle, made a cuppa and got comfortable on the sofa, ready to savour this thing of beauty in its entirety.

But, as my eyes took in the stunning illustrations and their accompanying text, something jolted me out of my reverie.

The minute I turned to the pages about Daniel Radcliffe, there it was, in very large font on one of the right hand pages, a glaring SPG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) error.

Someone had committed the crime of writing “it’s” instead of “its” and it was all I could see when I looked at the page.

And I am such a neurotic nutcase that it was all that I could think about when I contemplated my new purchase due to my irrational hatred of errors of this sort.

If a book of this price, edited and checked by any number of people, and printed by one of the world’s most esteemed publishing houses (Faber & Faber) can’t uphold the standard, what can?

Embarrassingly, I couldn’t resist emailing the key person involved with the book to ask that the error be removed in the paperback edition, as I like the rest of it so much that I want to be able to buy a ‘perfect’ copy of it for friends.

Obviously, I am not alone in obsessing over SPG errors. Lynne Truss made her name by writing a book on the subject (Eats Shoots and Leaves) and there are popular Twitter hashtags #grammarpolice and #punctuationpolice.

I do appreciate that language is a fluid and ever-evolving entity, and that in the grand scheme of things, perhaps getting it right is not the be-all and end-all, but I cannot stop the part of my mind that’s irritably pointing a finger and repeating, ad infinitum, that it’s wrong.

Perhaps it’s because I am the daughter of a schoolteacher and a former secretary, parents who, when confronted with my schoolwork, dissertations and so on, would read them and ignore their content, pointing out only where a comma could be inserted, or where I’d used a colon incorrectly.

Or possibly, it’s the legacy of my own past as an English teacher, when I didn’t get through a term-time day without reminding one of my pupils that it’s = it is.

To quote my daughter’s favourite song, is it time I just “let it go”?!