Microsoft Word has a feature called smart quotes which converts double and single quote characters into ones that are slightly different to indicate if they are an opening quote or a closing quote. If you just use Word for creating documents that don't go outside of Word, this is a pretty handy feature. But if you use documents created in Word for other purposes, smart quotes can lead to all sorts of problems. For example, if you use Word to create a document that you are going to cut and paste into something else, such as a web page, smart quotes will often get converted into gibberish. Not so smart any more.

If you want to change this so that Microsoft Word does not convert double and single quotes into smart quotes, go to the Tools menu and select "AutoCorrect...", then select the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab. Uncheck the box that says "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes". You then need to select the "AutoFormat" tab and uncheck the same box there. If you do this, your single and double quotes will no longer be converted into smart quotes.