Decrease stitches are used to add shaping to a pattern. When strategically placed, decreases create curved shapes and edges seen in basic garment knitwear construction. The most popular method of writing decreases in patterns is "sc2tog," or "sc3tog," or "scXtog," and so on, where "X" represents the number of stitches being worked together. The longer version of this is expressed as, "sc next 2 sts tog." Another way of writing out a single crochet decrease is, "dec 1 sc over next 2 sc." The more stitches worked into the decrease, the more severe of a curved shape it creates. For garment construction, decreases are generally worked throughout a design, rather than all in one or two rows, to allow for a gradual change in shape

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