Casagrande: Some rules we don’t have to abide by

The essence of drama, as they say, is conflict. Comedy is no different, as every show from “The Honeymooners” to “30 Rock” proves.

In the new comedy “The Last Man on Earth,” Phil Miller, played by Will Forte, is the lone survivor of a lethal virus who’s grappling with one particularly excruciating source of conflict: lack of female companionship.

After he’s reduced to hitting on a mannequin, it seems things can’t get any worse. But when your world sprang from the minds of comedy writers, things can always get worse. In their infinite sadism, the writers add a cruel twist: They answer Phil’s prayers. They send him a woman. But there’s a catch: She’s an utterly insufferable human being.

Here’s a bit of the dialogue from the first meeting of Phil and Carol, played by Kristen Schaal.

Phil: “I promise you there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Carol: “Nothing of which to be afraid.”

Phil: “I just said that.”

Carol (screaming and waving a gun): “You can’t end sentences with prepositions! ‘Nothing of which to be afraid’ is the proper grammar!”

That’s right, a team of professional comedy writers who set out to envision the most repugnant human being possible put their heads together and decided that the most repellent trait a person can possess is grammar snobbery.

There’s a lesson here (two actually, if you count how you should never ask a comedy writer if your butt looks big in those pants): Don’t be a grammar snob. And if this hilariously unflattering portrayal of misguided pedantry doesn’t convince you, maybe this will: Grammar snobs, 99 times out of 100, have their facts wrong.

Carol is a prime example. There is no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, and contrary to popular belief, there never was. The funniest thing ever said about sentence-ending prepositions usually gets misattributed to Winston Churchill, though experts no longer believe he’s the one who quipped that the prohibition is “the kind of pedantry up with which I shall not put!” But “The Last Man on Earth” dialogue could be the second funniest.

Phil: “What do you need that gun out for?”

Carol: “Don’t you mean ‘Out for what do you need that gun’?”

Phil: “That can’t be right.”

Carol cocks the gun.

If you don’t want to be so repugnant as to make the last man on Earth wish he could be the last person on Earth, don’t go around correcting people’s grammar. But if you just can’t help yourself, take note of some of the many “rules” that, like the one about sentence-ending prepositions, grammar snobs get wrong.

Splitting infinitives: Contrary to grammar snob belief, there’s no rule against putting a word between “to” and the infinitive form of a verb, as in “to boldly go.”

Good and well: If someone responds to “How are you?” with “good,” hold your tongue long enough to read the whole dictionary entry for this adjective. When you do, you’ll see that “good” can mean “in good health” and is, therefore, a legitimate synonym of the adjective “well.”

I feel bad: A half-developed understanding of adverbs leads many grammar snobs to conclude that this sentence needs an adverb: “I feel badly.” That’s wrong. In this sentence, “feel” is a copular verb, which means that any modifier that follows is not an adverb modifying the verb but an adjective modifying the subject. “I feel bad” is the proper grammar.

Finished vs. done: When someone pushes back his chair after a meal and says, “I’m done,” it’s a good time to question the authority of parents who told us: “You’re not done. A roast is done. You’re finished.” Sorry, moms and dads. But if you look that one up, you’ll see that “done” can be a synonym of “finished.”

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at [email protected].