How do you accept an answer?

Question

I have been "accepting answers" to my questions by up voting the good answers received for my questions. However, I have a 0% accept rate. :(

Apparently, I do not know how to accept answers.

Answer 1

Welcome to TeX.SE! you accept an answer by clicking on the green checkmark next to the answer. Voting up good answers is a way of saying it is a good answer, but there can be many good answers, but only one accepted answer.

Thanks for caring!

Here's what an unaccepted and an accepted answer looks like:

and here's that same answer before and after an upvote:

There's a brief period (15 minutes) immediately after asking the question when you can't accept an answer.

Answer 2

There's another difference between upvoting and accepting: After a short "grace" period, an upvote can't be undone (unless the upvoted answer has been edited). In contrast, an accepted answer can be "un-accepted" any time later. (A valid reason for doing so is that a new "late" answer supersedes the previously accepted one.)

Answer 3

Associated with accepting an answer (clicking on the arrow below the voting buttons) is an added bonus - reputation! If you read the main site FAQ entry on What is reputation?, you'll note that when accepting an answer, the acceptor receives +2 in reputation.