Suggested Correction Method.
Carrying on from Bosque's post regarding the importance of "correctors" I think it may be worth discussing methods of correction. In the past I have either acknowledged errors and allowed them to stand so that others may learn from them, or corrected them as per the rules of the game / challenge in which the error was made. I have seen others do a strikethrough, but thought this looked ugly.
Upon reflection though I can now see the value of this method. The strikethrough allows the original error to still be read with its correction immediately available. As a learning tool this is ideal. Without the presence of the original error we can still learn the correct way to say something, but we miss out on identifying the incorrect way, which can be just as important to know.
Perhaps the greatest mistake English speakers learning Spanish (and vice versa) make is directly translating how we say something in our native language into the other language and expecting the same structure to work, when often it doesn't. The strikethrough method of correction would be particularly valuable in identifying these instances of Spanglish (or the Spanish to English alternative - Ingleñol?) and offering the correct alternative.
So, my suggestion is that when a Corrector is kind enough to correct our errors, we use the strikethrough method to identify the error and then highlight the correction using bold text, italics, or both. Here are the codes for each:
Strikethrough - Enclose the error between <s> and </s>
Italics - Enclose the correction with an asterisk each end *
Bold - Enclose the correction with two asterisks each end **
Bold italics - Enclose the correction with three asterisks each end ***
Any thoughts or further suggestions are welcome 
9 Answers
I concur with Jellonz and appreciate the thoughtful explantion.
Words also can be highlighted using <mark> and then stop highlighting </mark>
Another comment: The mind of the speaker and the context they intend can not always be perceived by the corrector. Allow for their best intentions and make the correction. You can PM (private message: - ) them, if you really want to explain yourself, on a special occasion,
And show appreciation by ?voting up? our NSS contibutors; when they take part in threads.
The important thing here for the corrector is to actually "see" that the learner has read the corrections even though he is leaving them uncorrected in his post.
This can be done by a simple "thanks" for the corrector, a smiley or whatever method one wishes, but the corrector should know the learner has seen the post.
Another possibility is to leave your sentence uncorrected and rewrite the sentence with the corrections below, so everybody can see what exactly was wrong.
This last option would tick all the boxes 
I agree with you. I have thought about doing that, but just haven't. No reason....But, I think it's a really good idea for both, Spanish and English learning. Kudos!
I wish I could give you tons of votes on this, jellonz. I brought up the importance of the strikethrough method a long time ago and someone responded by telling me I could always go into the history to find out the mistakes. That's ridiculous! There's no way I'm going to spend extra time going into history when anyone who makes corrections should be using the strikethrough method which makes learning fast and easy.
The bottom line is it is so much more valuable to see the mistakes and the corrections. Anyone who doesn't do the strikethroughs is not doing much good at all for this site. If all I wanted to do was read correct Spanish, I'd pick up a Spanish language magazine or book.
I'm doing okay now in terms of the votes I get for my projects but it took a lot of complaining for people to decide to vote for me. I was amazed that no one appreciated that I did the strikethroughs. I guess people on SD vote for others not based on what they learn from other people's entries which is sad.
I would hope that Amber considers those who do the strikethrough method when choosing winners for Word of the Day (of course, for those who don't make mistakes on a particular day's assignment that doesn't apply).
I highlighted Amber just for the fun of it. I'm practicing Esteban's technique for highlighting words.
Thanks, jello, very thoughtful post
I respectfully disagree with jellonz. There is almost just one way to say things the right way and thousand ways to make mistakes, so many times half-mistakes would remain just to avoid filling a post with chains of strikeout text.
So far, any time somebody has pointed a mistake in my posts, I have edited the mistakes out and replaced by the suggested versions (if I left out some correction, please let me know ... fue por puro distraído nomás). I consider it to be a great help and great value, as in all those cases I was offering examples explaining questions about Spanish, so I could badly left a wrong example or unclear explanation.
One of the problems that I found in the Q&A section of Spanishdict is the lack of boundaries between legitimate practice, including mistakes, which is always welcome, and other issues that are defining more permanent rules and advice, which should be edited a thousand times until it becomes perfect for others to find it using the search engine of their choice.
I don't find an easy way to balance both things: keeping mistakes to help learn for them and having correct straightforward explanations of important topics. Maybe there's a section "editor choices" that I've skipped without noticing.
But I'm sure of one thing: the same way I don't like courses where everyone -sometimes even the teacher- has their own personal wrong accent -including mine- and I prefer the situations where I only work my ear to understand native or kinda-native accents, even when I watch Indian movies, I woudn't like to see examples of every idiosyncratic personal mistakes nor make others to see mine.
Saved I am having a nightmare with my keyboard (laptop) I can't even find an asterisk and none of the given methods for strikethrough or highlighting work. I have spent the whole morning trying to sort it out and it is driving me nutty. I read through my posts and appreciate the corrections but it is looking as though I am not able to correct in the approved manner. Will bring hubby in later to have another go!
Good post Alec. I agree with you 100% that identifying errors in reference posts would only be a distraction, and unnecessary. In the cases of reference posts the crucial factor is relating information clearly and accurately, so while all effort should be made to correct errors to achieve this clarity, identifying these errors would would only confuse and detract from the importance of the message.
In the daily games, however, the strikethrough / bold method of correction does act as a learning tool for others. So often as English speakers we speak Spanish as we would English. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Many times when it doesn't I have seen a strikethrough written exactly how I would have, because it seems natural to an English speaker. But when I see it struck out I know it is incorrect, and then the highlighted correction instantly tells me the correct way. This is a valuable learning tool.
Every post has the potential to be educational. Reference posts do this through conveying information as clearly and accurately as possible, whereas the daily games can do this by highlighting errors and corrections. So, in order to maximise the potential of both I'd suggest not identifying, but of course still correcting, errors in reference posts, and identifying and correcting errors in the daily games.
Thanks for the post Alec.
Please have a look at this again, thanks.
