so am i to understand that quarks and electrons are much the same types of particles?i thought quarks made up the baryon particles ( protons,neutrons etc)?
Quarks and electrons aren't the same particle and in fact share no similarities in general, except that they both have spin 1/2.
However when the strong and electroweak forces were unified they acted on only one type of particle, because (and this might sound weird) that force needed only one "representation".
When the forces seperated however the two new forces needed two seperate representations, giving rise to two classes of particles.
This is similar to how neutrinos and electrons became seperate particles after electroweak symmetry breaking.
  