I find the current behavior of displaying caret affinity confusing. Instead of the current implementation, why not just use the display method that’s used for e.g. a new line?
I.e., instead of this:
Use this:
No need to remember which caret “direction” means the strikethrough will continue to be applied. See strikethrough above caret? Expect strikethrough text. Don’t see it? Expect no strikethrough. Simpler, I think, and certainly easier to remember.
Thanks for trying it out.
For me I feel like the caret affinity caret is easier to understand. The rule is “Point the tail to the formatting you want”. Once you get the hang of it I think its pretty strait forward, at least it feels pretty nice to me. You will always see one of two visual representations.
If I used the second approach then it might be easier when you first start, but I don’t think it could ever become a second nature feature of the editor. Each boundary would show a different caret icon that you would need to interpret and make sense of. I think easier for brain to say I want it to be “text before” or “text after” then trying to translate that text into attribute icons.
Hope that makes some sense.
I think my brain would say “icons above the caret = text before.” Not a huge deal, though. 
Thank you for your consideration!
I have to say that I have found toggling the affinity to left and right with the cursor keys:
This is a great point I had not considered.
Ok, so let’s split the difference and keep the tail plus add the icons at the top. 
(just kidding, unless Jesse implements it, in which case it was my great idea 
)