Hello. Im new to the forum and inkscape. I think its pretty awesome so far, a free corel draw essentially . Im just wondering how I could go about typing a couple words via the text tool, then apply a gradient to each letter, as well as a stroke. Thanks.

If you're applying the same gradient and stroke to all letters, simply select the object and open the Fill and stroke palette to apply the gradient and stroke.
Further reading:
Text
Fill and Stroke Paint

If you are wanting to apply a different gradient and stroke to each letter, that's more complicated. So I won't explain until you confirm that's what you're trying to do.

Yeah, I learned how to do that no problem. Right now I have it through the couple words Dark gray, and go to a lighter gray throughout the phrase. However, I'd like it to that for each letter itself. So each one has its own gradient individual gradient. In corel draw, there was a way you seperate each letter in the text (could drag them, resize them on there own, etc)

In Inkscape you need to convert the objects to a path (Path > Object to Path). Note that this makes the text no longer editable using .

At this point all characters are still a part of the one object. So to break them apart you need to go to Path > Break apart.

The catch here is that letters that have holes, like "O", "P", "a" and so on, will lose their holes. The holes become a seperate object. So for each of these letter you need to select the letter and it's hole (drag a selection around them will be easiest to select both objects) and then go to Path > Difference.

Or you can type each letter as a separate text object and style them differently, only align their baseline so they appear as one word (you have that option on the Align dialog). Having letters each as a separate text objects allows you to keep the text editing features.