Highlighted techniques are those granted by your current fighting style, while those coloured cyan are available because of the weapon in your other hand (see ‘help assist’), and highlighted cyan means both. Equally, yellow indicates a technique specific to your encumbrance (or because you’re mounted) while green represents a combination of yellow and cyan. Purple means the technique is available because of a talent you possess.
You should also be aware of the special characters; ‘*’ is automatically added whenever a technique requires you to act within a limited time frame (such as when jumping, or after catching an opponent’s blade with your own), ‘-‘ means you are falling, ‘_’ is added whenever you fall onto the ground, and ‘#’ means that you’re entangled by something (such as a net).
As well as techniques, your combat table also colours other things - if the Delay is coloured red, that means it includes the penalty for your off-hand. Att(ack) is coloured to indicate its attack strength, just as Def(ence) is for defence strength and Dam(age) for its bypass bonus. To see how these modifiers are applied, and to learn what the attack and defence strengths mean, see ‘help attack’, ‘help defence’ and ‘help damage’.
See also: assist attack combat defence kill interleaving