I need to color all text spoken by an NPC without having to manually add the color to each line in the "thingstosay" stringlist.
New speak to command:

if (HasScript(object, "speak")) {
  do (object, "speak")
}
else if (ListCount(object.thingstosay) = 0) {
  msg (CapFirst(object.gender) + " says,")
  msg ("\"<i>That's all I have for now.\"")
}
else {
  line = StringListItem (object.thingstosay, 0)
  msg (CapFirst(object.gender) + " says,")
  msg ("<em>" {color:silver: + line})
  list remove (object.thingstosay, line)
}

I get the following error:

Error running script: Function not found: ')'

I know the line:

msg ("<em>" {color:silver: + line})

is wrong, but I have tried every arrangement I can think of. It allows the <em>but not the color code.
msg ("<em>{color:silver:}" + line) This runs but no color.
Any ideas?

When you've put the string together, you want it to look like <em>{color:silver:Your text here}</em>. The text processor directive is parsed by the text processor when the message is printed; it is a string, not a quest function, so needs to be in quotes.

So the line you want is:

msg ("<em>{color:silver:" + line + "}</em>")

But the text processor automatically changes {color:silver:some text} to <span style="color: silver">some text</span>, and uses quite a lot of function calls in the process; so it might be more efficient to generate the HTML yourself. Something like:

msg ("<em><span style=\"color:silver\">" + line + "</span></em>")

Although while you're applying both emphasis and color to the same text, it would be more efficient to combine the two styles:

msg ("<em style=\"color:silver\">" + line + "</em>")

That is purdy. Thanks again Merlin...I mean Mrangel