A comabtive reader, commenting on my earlier post:

[Quoting me] “… though I hope Bill O’Reilly will not subtract from the gaiety of the nation …” What’s with the pestiferous apostrophe? Don’t you mean Bill Orally? (with apologies to Manuel and Basil). Or is it only the brown-skinned punctuation to which you object?

What I object to is the alteration of familiar words and names from an orthography eveyone was used to to one that nobody knows how to pronounce. Is there one in a thousand among English-speaking people who pronounces “Qu’ran” as anything other than “Koran”? So why change the damn spelling? (To affect intellectual superiority & sow confusion among the Great Unwashed, that’s why.)

None of that applies to “O’Reilly,” a long-customary form which no-one has any difficulties with. In any case, if we were to complain about it, he’d probably switch to the authentic spelling, which would be something like “Ui Rághailligh.” Life Rule #428: Don’t mess with the Irish.