Mac Mail and the Elusive Horizontal Bar / Separator Line

Question

LIke so many people, I tried to devise the best way to insert a horizontal separator bar between messages in a multi-message thread. I refuse to insert a long string of dashes -- I want a solid black separator bar -- and I don't want to use a plugin either. So here's the best I can do at this point:
First, to set it up, open a blank Word document, type three dashes ("---"), hit the Return key (the dashes turn into a horizontal bar), copy the line above and below the resulting horizontal line (ie., to be sure you encapsulate the line within your selection), and then paste it into a new (empty) email.
If you do the same thing with the equal sign ("===") you end up with a DOUBLE line separator. You might as well copy that into your blank email too.
Then, simply save that new email in your DRAFT folder so you can easily access those lines quickly to copy/paste them in any other email.
This only seems to work when the horizontal line is black. You can change the line in Word to any color (using the Borders and Shading tab in the Format Pallette) but then when you paste it into a Mail, the line is invisible, so just use a black line.
Just fyi.

Answer 1

Simple solution--very simple
Open up MS word (or Pages alternative) and create a horizontal line by  holding down the "shift" key and then holding down the "_" key to make the line as long as you want
Copy this line into your clipboard
Open Automator
Go to Automator | Services | Services Preferences | and click the "Text" button across the top
Type the two letters "ln" in the "Replace" column and the paste the _______________________________ you created and copied in the "With" Column
Every time you type the letters ln into your email, it gives you the option of replacing the letters ln with a line if you simply hit return
Hope that helps--I was Googling the solution--and came up with that....