Abstract: A data processing includes an on-line, interactive, intelligent help system which provides suggestions as to actions a user can take after entry into the system of an erroneous command or a question. The system also responds with explanations of why the suggestions were made and how they work. The system includes a natural language analyzer for converting the questions into goals. A knowledge base and an inference engine further analyze the goals and provide one or more suggestions on how to achieve such goals. An explanation generator uses such analysis to dynamically generate the explanations which are tailored to the user's goal.