Making 1st garment, help please

[owenj]

Hello, I’m thinking about making the Gracefully Gathered Haltertop from Knitting Lingerie Style for my first garment, but had a few questions regarding the instructions.

While working on the body or the front, the directions will say to increase 1 stitch on each side of a marker or to decrease 1, but it doesn’t say which form of increase or decrease to use. Is there a standard inc/dec you use in this case?

For the front it also says to dec 1 st at each end of the needle once…I don’t really understand what that means.

Sorry if the answers to this are obvious, but any help would be greatly appreciated!
~Jaime