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Clue 2 down's misprint is a question mark for me. I hope I'm not spoiling others' attempts by asking, but does the misprint occur in the fifth letter of the first word?
Despite all the generous pointers so far, I'm blessed if I can find the third word of the three thematic ones; of the two I have (if they are correct), one is a predecessor to Y and the other reflects the puzzle's title. I realise it is difficult to give a hint to the third without giving the game away but a cryptic tip if possible would be appreciated.

Reluctantly, I'm going to leave this one behind. I have a full grid, all misprints/corrections bar 2, I can see what the 3x3 block needs to look like, and I have a pretty good idea of what the end result will be meant to represent. I just don't have the hours I think it will take to work out which are the right 3 thematic words and do the detailed cross-checking to get the last 2 instructions.

2D misprint - my thought here was 3rd letter of 2nd word.

Yes, it's in the next word.

If your predecessor can only be completed by ''appropriately highlighting'' it, you've got the right one (pretty sure your shorter one is right).
Knowing how many cells are needed to complete the highlighting it shouldn't be too difficult to find another (appropriately highlighted) candidate.

This certainly was very clever and a thorough workout. I’m afraid I am with Granama in finding the endgame just a tad tedious but nevertheless many thanks to Brock for an excellent piece of construction and a mostly challenging and satisfying solve.

I agree with Smellyharry and Granama that the relationship between the hint and the thematic items was, essentially circular. I happened to spot the 3 thematic words but had I not, I might have been able to derive the two messages by lining up the corrections/misprints and teasing a sensible message out of them by ignoring some letters. Don't know whether this might help Greg 'get off the ground', so to speak?

Based on all the comments here, it seems that I'm in the minority for liking this puzzle. And that's despite a bit of frustration trying to find the 3x3 block. (I reckon that the problems I had with the thematic words were down to me: should have paid closer attention to the wiki entry.)

I enjoyed the grid-fill for this puzzle, but the end game is becoming annoying. I have X and Y: I have the 9 cells: I have an eight-letter thematic word, but that is all. My misprints/corrections in clue order are gobbledygook. The letters in 6 of the 9 cells are contained in two entries each, but the preamble gives no information as to which to choose. This is preventing me from moving forwards. The whole thing has ceased to be enjoyable, so I am thinking of throwing in the towel.

0pt0 - Are you referring to the 9 letter square block of the 'Y'? If you are, the preamble does give the necessary info - you're to use the ''corrections'', not the misprints, to reveal how the symbols are to be entered. Earlier in the thread I confirmed the order of entry - all of the across clue corrections followed by the down clue corrections (in other words, in normal crossword order - as you'd expect).

At this stage I don't see a problem in giving the full word count and letter count of the instruction contained in the 'gobbledegook' (but I'll wait until you confirm this - that is if you're still trying to finish the puzzle).

Thanks Drxx. Using the corrections to the clues whose entries penetrate the block of 9 cells, I get:-

First row: three identical letters
Second row: a pair of identical letters, plus one other
Third row: three identical letters
First column: three identical letters
Second column: a pair of identical letters
Third column: one letter

That makes 15 letters in total, because 6 of the cells are in both across and down entries. This is the impasse I had previously reached and I cannot see the way forward.