"Leave a Reply" link floating above my posts?

Chances are that the check for comments_open() is missing. If you have not made other changes, just reinstall the theme.

If you have made other changes, you should save the current theme folder by renaming it and changing the theme name in style.css. Then install a fresh copy of Twenty Twelve, create a child theme for it, and make all your changes in the child theme.

Thank you for your response. I appreciate that.

What you are saying does make sense, but…

I have completely reinstalled all of the 2012 theme files over top of the old ones. comments_open() is right there in comments.php where it belongs.

Oddly, it did not make a difference, the link is still out of place. Thoughts?

You should create a Child theme to make your changes. If you do not, all of your changes will be lost if you update your theme.

Try adding this to the end of your child theme’s style.css:

.entry-header .comments-link { display: none; }

@cub — that location of “Leave a Reply” is the way 2012 is coded…

The CSS I gave should take care of that.

Thank you vtxyzzy for your advice and consideration.

In light of WPyogi’s Gordion-knot-cutting observation, I have decided to leave the link.

Peace.

I have to disagree with WPyogi. Here is a snippet of code from content.php:

<?php if ( comments_open() ) : ?>
				<div class="comments-link">
					<?php comments_popup_link( '<span class="leave-reply">' . __( 'Leave a reply', 'twentytwelve' ) . '</span>', __( '1 Reply', 'twentytwelve' ), __( '% Replies', 'twentytwelve' ) ); ?>
				</div><!-- .comments-link -->
			<?php endif; // comments_open() ?>

This definitely checks to see if comments are open before displaying ‘Leave a reply’, and it is the only place in Twenty Twelve that ‘Leave a reply’ is found.

The code I gave will hide that.