You probably have an international keyboard layout selected in
Windows. See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306560 "How To
Use the United States-International Keyboard Layout in Windows
XP", except that you want to select the standard U.S. keyboard
instead of the U.S.-International keyboard.

Matter of Fact wrote:

I just started using Word 2003 on WinXP and am having trouble with the fact
that my quotation marks don't appear until I hit another key. How can I turn
that off? (It didn't happen when I ran Word 2003 on Windows 2000).