No it doesn't matter about the using the word red.

You might like to try escaping out the " characters though
try

print STDOUT "<FONT COLOR=\"red\">$data</FONT>";

I won't go into why you shouldn't use the font tag at all, and that using style sheets (CSS) is so much better.

Also you might like to try writing out bulk HTML statements like this: print STDOUT <<_EOM_; <p>This is my html which doesn't need to be escaped <font color=red>see</font></p> _EOM_

Cheers, Tom