I'm guessing it has to do with "smart quotes" that display differently
depending on whether they're opening quotes or closing quotes. The program
may be waiting for your next character to determine which type of quotation
mark to place there.
No, it's not that, if this is a system-wide issue, rather than just in
Word (or other MS Office apps that use "smart quotes").
It's more likely the use of "International US keyboard", as opposed to
the regular US one. That does this sort of (annoying!) thing to make
it easier to enter accented characters.
The "feature' dates back to typewriters, which sometimes had the ' key
as a "dead" key that didn't move the typing position forward. That
way, you could type 'e or 'a for accented variants of those letters,
and ' followed by space for a "real" single-quote character.
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