This could very well be the most unique question I have ever read on the HTML/CSS forum...

As for the answer:
HTML is technically a SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and it uses the comments specified by that language.

Now when learning HTML people are taught that HTML comment tags are as follows,

<!-- to begin a comment and --> to end a comment.

This however isn't technically how they work.

I'll try to explain clearly.

The <! tag opens a comment and the > tag closes it (similar to any other tag in HTML.

This therefore makes <!> a legal comment, which it is.

The '--' is equivillent to a quotation, and this quotation is required for any string you want to have within the comment (IE text) so if you want to write anything within a comment you have to put '--' around the text (string) you write.

Just like when you write a paper, any quote that opens has to be closed somewhere.

With this in mind the following are legal, examlpes of comments,
Code:



So all you have to keep in mind when creating comments is that every -- you open you have to close somewhere.

So in order to make your line seperator comment legal, simply make the total number of dashes a multiple of 4.

Hope this explains things clearly, if not google html comments and you should be able to find websites which have some good examples...