It would be great if instead of this:
$links[] = l(t('read more'), "node/$node->nid", array('title' => t ('Read the rest of this posting.'), 'class' => 'read-more'));
It wouldn't be so bad if modules actually did this - but only some modules actually output a class on their links. Having some links with CSS and some without is a frustrating thing for a themer. I've filed at least 2 bugs on modules not including classes.
Modules were doing something like this:
$links['mymodule'] = array('title' => t('Read the rest of this posting.'), 'url' => "node/$node->nid", 'class' => 'read-more');
And relying on the themes to actually display the link.
In this situation, a theme could add a class to every link because it knows what module outputted the link. At a minimum, perhaps the code that concatenates all the links should automatically include the module's name as a class? -Mark