The Toolbox theme is displaying a pipe character (“|”) above the comment box (on the home page) when it’s not needed. If I’m not mistaken, this pipe’s purpose is to divide the “leave a comment” option from the “edit this post” option. The problem is that the editing option is absent when one is logged out, yet the pipe remains.

I’ll comment on this post, then disallow comments on the post and, while remaining logged in, see whether the first option disappears while the pipe and the second option remain.

Update, 28 Dec 2011: There are two additional items (the post’s tags, if any, and its category) that show up below posts when using the Toolbox theme and viewing certain pages. The idea is that each of the four items appears only when needed or appropriate. (For instance, if commenting is closed for a post or it has no tags, those items will not appear.) The problem is still as stated above: an item brings a trailing pipe to separate it from items to follow — whether anything actually follows or not.

I learned all this while playing with the code and solving the problem as initally stated. Since the four items may be present or absent in various combinations, they required a more elaborate fix, but the principle was the same: Test whether two items are present to determine whether a pipe to separate them is needed.