theme diary: "comments off" removed from each individual post

In a previous post regarding my new, javascript-heavy, mobile-responsive WordPress theme I groused:

Would... like to remove the phrase "comments off" that appears in each post; that seems like a needless provocation for the "no comments means intellectual fascism" contingent.

Believe or not, yrs truly was once frequently smeared for having comments turned off. One hater actually created a mirror site of tommoody.us with a comment feature added. Those were the days when blogs mattered!
OK, so the words "Comments Off" are now gone, after some, uh, internet research. The WordPress Theme Editor was no help, the php file had to be edited as described in a Google-cached post from a site that is now a fake blog. (Nazgoz: How To Remove Comments Off Text From WordPress Post Title).
To edit the php file gedit was added as the default editor for php files in Filezilla.
Now there is a dangling hyphen after the date (or my name on a page with a single post) under each post title. Will nail this eventually. [Update: hat tip to Rene Abythe for a CSS suggestion that got rid of the hyphen.)