Included in the book are a range of example documents and a great blueprint for a training manual that will please the organisers amongst us. The example he uses throughout the book is a performance appraisal training course.

The broad approach he recommends would work for most courses, but more details on producing exercises might be helpful for those of us who have to write courses on how to use a particular software package.

The chapters flow through the process of producing the training course and include the stages involved in writing a training manual, the structure of the manual, a contents summary, and preparing a timetable and lists.

He includes examples on how to achieve this, for example using a mind map to get your ideas on paper for later sorting. He also covers writing the detail, presentation techniques and considering support documentation. He rounds this off with tips on using the training manual you have created, preparation and running of the course.

There are quite a lot of examples throughout the book, as the author shows examples of the sort of material he would produce using the performance appraisal example. The book has 36 pages of appendices that contain examples of material for presentation techniques, a quality customer service example and a performance appraisal example.

This book is intended to be used whilst preparing your training course and contains a lot of tips and exercises to help you produce your own material.

I just have one work of caution. Although I think the book is a very useful addition to any technical writer’s library, and the author undoubtedly knows what he is talking about, I think it very expensive for such a slim volume - 131 pages without the contents and index at the back.

Freelance trainers may be rather disappointed with the book if they parted with their own hard-earned cash. However in a training department where courses are being developed on a regular basis by more than one trainer, then the book would probably be considered a lot more cost effective.