LOS ANGELES -- David Lloyd, the extraordinarily prolific, witty sitcom writer, died on Tuesday according to family members. Neither the cause of death nor his age has been disclosed as yet.

A Yale graduate who started his career writing jokes for "The Jack Paar Show," Lloyd went on to write for a number of exceptional sitcoms, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show," "Cheers," "Taxi," and "Frasier."

Lloyd was perhaps best-known for writing what is probably the most famous episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Chuckles Bites The Dust,” for which he won an Emmy in 1976. The episode captured Lloyd’s comic sensibility: a nuanced understanding of the complex emotions that go into provoking a laugh:

Lloyd’s son Christopher is the creator of ABC’s new hit sitcom Modern Family. His son Stephen is a producer for How I Met Your Mother.

In many ways, David Lloyd helped to create what we call the “workplace family” comedy, in which people who labor long hours together bond and quarrel and joke and cry, as a “real” family might. Lloyd knew how to join people together — as characters, and as a vast audience for those characters.