Writing about bananas, my student Lyn described how the fungus FOC kills banana plants: It "SPREADS through soil and REPRODUCES within the plant’s vascular system, gradually BLOCKING water and nutrients until it starves to death" (capitalization added). The two conjugated verbs with coordination followed by a gerund (spreads and reproduces, blocking) made me stumble as I read, so I suggested this edit: It "SPREADS through soil, REPRODUCES within the plant’s vascular system, and gradually BLOCKS water and nutrients until the plant starves to death." I wonder if others writing in English share my preference for triple coordination of verbs over double coordination of the verbs with the third in gerund form. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 May 2026)