Difficult to say w/o seeing more of instr. Perhaps there’s a number missing from in front of ‘st’…ie ‘next 3 st’? (But then st should be plural: sts.) Maybe the orig text was supposed to be either ‘each’ OR ‘next’ (inc 1 st in each st OR inc 1 st in next st) but the writer forgot to remove one.
Since they’re on different lines, they may be referring to a different instructions. Without seeing more than `blah blah’ of the pattern rows, it’s hard to say. Usually at the end of the row with increases it will say how many sts you should have at that point. That can help you figure it out.