IOW the extra apostrophe is required to prevent literal strings from being mistaken as a field delimiter. Oracle allows the delimiter (quote) to become some other character, but that's a pain.
slightwv (䄆 Netminder)
Forgot about this. You can use the 'q' syntax as well.
update TBL1
set desc=q'[Clerk's Office]'
where ID='005';