That demo contains neither the "Continue Reading" link (in black text below the latest-post excerpt) nor the "Continue reading »" link that appears (in blue text directly after the latest post excerpt, that is, within the same paragraph) which I've (also) hidden via CSS. This second link is disabled in the CSS by setting "latest_post p a" to "display:none;".

This demo at WooThemes shows the "Continue Reading" link, in black next to the category and comments-count links, that I wish to be reinstated.

To test my theory, I reinstated it manually using Google Chrome's and manually inserting a link between span class "latest_read_on" tags. It works.

I suppose it's far too much to hope that the folks at WordPress.com might reinstate it, huh!

I wouldn't say that at all! It never hurts to ask, and then you can find out if the option was disabled to fix something or for some other reason.

In this case, the fact that there were two "continue reading" links was reported as a bug and one was removed. Out of curiosity, what was different about the one that was removed that you wanted to keep? And why won't the "feat_exc" one that you have hidden with CSS work in it's place? Note: I'm maybe forgetting how it looked before, but I looked at juspi's screenshot at http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/the-morning-after/ and that's the way the demo page looks to me now: http://themorningafterdemo.wordpress.com/ It's possible it's been changed around a little since you first wrote this thread too, so it might have been in flux *while* you were talking about it.

#latest_post p a {
    display: none;
}

Never compare a self-hosted theme to what is available here.

(I'm working on taking out the modified bits from my adapted CSS file and will paste them in with "add to existing" selected.)

One thing that will get you in trouble though is pasting the entire CSS stylesheet into the CSS edit window. You put ONLY the specific selectors, and ONLY the specific declarations you are adding or changing into the editor and then make sure that "add to existing..." is selected otherwise it breaks any relative links to any images used in the theme.

Help?