Using hide($submitted); in a tpl?
There must be 2 variables holding the "submitted" string, $submitted and also $content['submitted']. You should either forget the $submitted variable and if you render($content['submitted']) then it should put that as #printed =&gt; true. Then later if you render($content) it shouldn't print the submitted text as it's already printed.

The second option would be to render($submitted) and then do hide($content['submitted']) before render($content).