At the end of the quote, there should be a tag [ /quote] (with a space put in so it remains in plain text); if you leave that in (or add it back after deleting it) you will get the quote box around the text you are trying to keep. The quote starts with the tag [ quote] or [ quote=name] (also shown with an extra space in each).
Also, if you switch to the full reply screen (button under the quick reply text box) there are buttons to add the start and end tags around selected text for various functions, so you can play around and see how they work, if you wish. Basically, [ something] means 'start something' (font, colour, formatting, etc), while [ /something] means 'end something'.
As for combat, I really, really dislike micro-managed combat systems, as well as anything twitch based. There have been several debates about this in previous topics...
