You've gotta love Haynes Manuals sometimes...!

[Grahamm]

When writing manuals, I often explicitly recommend how they should be used - similarly to what I listed here. After having read this post, I'm even more convinced that it is good to state the "manual for the manual" right at the start. 

I've written rules for Board Games and one of the most important parts is what's called "Blind Play Testing", where you hand the game and rulebook to a bunch of people who've never seen it before and sit back and listen.

You make notes of them saying "Hang on, what does that mean?" or "How do you do this?" or "Can I do that...?" and check that they can find the answers in the rulebook.

If they can't, you need to rewrite the rules and/or add examples to make it clear.

IMO this should be the case for *all* manuals :thumbup