So, you type something on your computer and then need to enter a quotation mark. However, when you press the key with the corresponding symbol on your keyboard, the quotation mark doesn’t appear on the screen. To make it appear, you either have to press the same key again, but this could result in two quotation marks, or press any other symbol, which will result in both the quotation mark and that symbol typed simultaneously.
What you’re experiencing is a “dead key.” But don’t worry, dead doesn’t mean your keyboard is malfunctioning. A “dead key” is actually a term that dates back to the days of typewriters, meaning that pressing this key will not advance the typewriter one symbol to the right. The reason for this is that many European languages use the Latin alphabet but have many more letters than the standard English alphabet. Some of these letters require symbols above the letter, which are called diacritics.
On a typewriter, the way this worked was simple: you would press the quotation mark key, and nothing would happen. Then, you would press the letter that you wanted the diacritic on, and the typewriter would type the required symbol on the paper.
The reason this happens with your computer is that you likely have a keyboard layout set to United States International. This is a built-in behavior for this keyboard layout, and in most cases, you cannot do anything about it because it’s part of the standard.
However, what you can do is change your US International keyboard layout to a standard United States layout. This solution works across all operating systems, including macOS, Linux, Android, and Windows. On Windows, for example, go to your language pack in language settings, then add the “United States” keyboard layout. Afterward, you can remove the international keyboard layout, and the quotation mark will appear immediately when you type it.