Best way to change font colour halfway through paragraph?

<span> will allow you to style text, but it adds no semantic content.

As you're emphasizing some text, it sounds like you'd be better served by wrapping the text in <em></em> and using CSS to change the color of the <em> element. For example:

CSS

.description {
  color: #fff;
}

.description em {
  color: #ffa500;
}

Markup

<p class="description">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur 
adipiscing elit. Sed hendrerit mollis varius. Etiam ornare placerat 
massa, <em>eget vulputate tellus fermentum.</em></p>

In fact, I'd go to great pains to avoid the <span> element, as it's completely meaningless to everything that doesn't render your style sheet (bots, screen readers, luddites who disable styles, parsers, etc.) or renders it in unexpected ways (personal style sheets). In many ways, it's no better than using the <font> element.

.description {
  color: #000;
}

.description em {
  color: #ffa500;
}

<p class="description">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur 
adipiscing elit. Sed hendrerit mollis varius. Etiam ornare placerat 
massa, <em>eget vulputate tellus fermentum.</em></p>

Nornally the tag is used for that, with a change in style.

Like <p>This is my text <span class="highlight"> and these words are different</span></p>,

You set the css in the header (or rather, in a separate css file) to make your "highlight" text assume the color you wish.

(e.g.: with

<style type="text/css">
  .highlight {color: orange}

</style>

in the header. Avoid using the tag <font /> for that at all costs. :-)

<span style="color:orange;">orange text</span>

Is the only way I know of barring the font tag.