The first problem with her damage is that she is using a weapon.  Unless she has insanely good hand wraps, she would do more damage with her bare hands at lvl 18. 

As for weapon direction, if the "+" is selected then the weapon will gain skill as you use.  If the lock is chosen, the weapon will not gain or lose skill when used.  If the "-" is selected, then the weapon will lose skill when she runs out of points while advancing another weapon.  The one with the minus will lose a point, and the one with a + will gain the point.

The directional buttons exist because you only have the capacity to master 4 weapon specializations I think. So, say you have mastered ulaks, knuckles, martial swords & martial staves...but get some good handwraps. But your brains are full!  So you can set one of the skills to go down, which makes room for handwraps specialization skilling. And these are seperate from "2hb 2hp h2h 2hs" etc skills, are those are general skills which affect anything that's blunt, slashes, etc..whereas the skills with the directional buttons are specialization in that weapon type only.