Grace theme – any way to turn off comments?

have you ticked/or un-ticked all discussion options in the dashboard?

in ‘settings’ ‘discussion’ ?

and below the post editor
in the ‘discussion’ field?

if this is not visible, click on ‘screen options’ near the top right on that page; tick the ‘discussion’ box;
then go back to below the post editor, and tick/un-tick the options there.

I just un-ticked everything in ‘settings’ ‘discussion’, but the site still shows the ability to comment.

I don’t see any discussion options in the Dashboard (clicked on ‘screen options’, but don’t see a ‘discussion’ box), so I can’t un-tick any options there, however.

Hmmmmm

I don’t see any discussion options in the Dashboard (clicked on ‘screen options’, but don’t see a ‘discussion’ box), so I can’t un-tick any options there, however.

goto ‘edit post’ – where you would edit the content of your posts – on that page near the top right, there should be the ‘screen options’ tab…

Thanks much – indeed it is there (so simple, yet confusing to someone new to this!).
Last one in this same string-
is there a way to make the “Comments are closed” text go away also?
Since I’m not going to be using comments for the site, I was thinking would be nice to keep it completely clean. If can’t easily be done, no trouble, I can live with it.
Thanks much for the help alchymyth, really is appreciated as I get up to speed!

look for comments_popup_link() (with some code in the brackets) in the front page template (index.php ?) and possibly in archive.php, or loop.php or etc.
(details depend on your theme which i haven’t downloaded – if it is a free theme)

either remove this function together with the corresponding html tags;

or set the fifth parameter in the functions to '' i.e. an empty string.
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Function_Reference/comments_popup_link