The rules as written state that:

"A single skill can only be trained once per character rank. If one of those skills is already trained, the character can choose to instead spend the advance a specialisation for the appropriate skill."

Assuming you are level one, does this mean that if you didn't train it during character creation you can train it but then cannot purchase a specialisation during your time in that rank? Furthermore, when you complete a career the rulebook states "the character learns a specialisation for each of that career's key skills he trained during his time in that career." How does that interact with skills that you trained during character creation and then specialised in during the course of completing your first career? Does that mean that you could end Rank 1 with two specialisations?

Illustrious said:

Ok, so at creation you can train a skill which counts against your rank maximum, but not as a career skill.

Since this doesn't count as a career skill they give you free specializations during creation if you have enough points in.

At the end of a career when you dedicate only the skills you trained (got yellow dots in) during said career get the free specialization. NOT the ones from creation.

You can get a skill trained, spec during creation, and then spec multiple times (no limit on spec) during your career instead of training new skills (or perhaps in addition to). Moreover (if you're clever) you can get some non-career advances, hit rank 2 and spend your last skill training to bump that skill up to 2 during the career and pick up the free spec.

Hope that clears some stuff up.

That makes sense, thank you very much for the clarification.

I feel that FFG could have written it more clearly :-