Choosing colours for text.

Question

A friend of mine, who uses Windows, replies to my emails by inserting text coloured red, into my original message. It is a terrific idea, so I went looking for instructions on how to do it with Mac.
I'd also like to be able to highlight passages in new emails I write, by colouring the text.
I found a Mac. instruction entitled "Choosing colours for text and objects". Unfortunately, it suffers from the common Mac. problem of being written by a geek, who assumes that the reader knows what he knows and fails to adequately define the method and also fails to describe how it works. Here is the offending passage:
Select the text or object whose color you want to change and open the Colors panel.
"Select the text" is the bit where the writer failed.
* The method of selecting the text is not given.
* No insight is given as to how it works.
** Can a new email be set up so as to type it in red?
** Or is the method to type it, THEN change it to red?
** If the latter is the case, how can I reply as described above, by inserting passages into a received email?
** Also, how can I highlight a passage in a new email, by using red font?
I should be most grateful, if someone who understands how the system works, would teach me how to achieve what I have described above.
Incidentally and in fairness, the Colours panel part of the instruction is clearly written and I don't need any help with that.

Answer 1

"Select the text" is the bit where the writer failed.
The method of selecting the text is not given.
That's a standard OS thing... just click and drag over the text you want to select.
Double-click to select a word. Triple-click to select a paragraph.
Can a new email be set up so as to type it in red?
Or is the method to type it, THEN change it to red?
Again, this follows the standard UI rules, namely:
1) If there is something selected, change that (i.e. if you have some text selected and you choose red in the color palette, the selected text goes red.
2) If nothing is selected, use the chosen color from this point on (i.e. the next characters you type will be in the chosen color).
Note that color (and font) selections are position-dependent. That is if you type two paragraphs, then set the second one to red (by selecting it), the first one doesn't change. Additionally if you click back in the first paragraph you'll continue to type in the default font/color, not red, because that is what the first paragraph was written in. Hope that makes sense.