There will probably be times when you want to stop the Wolfram System in the middle of a calculation. Perhaps you realize that you asked the Wolfram System to do the wrong thing. Or perhaps the calculation is just taking a long time, and you want to find out what is going on.

The way that you interrupt a Wolfram System calculation depends on what kind of interface you are using.

When doing some operations, it may take the Wolfram System some time to respond to your interrupt. When the Wolfram System does respond, it will give you a menu of possible things to do. This will typically include not only aborting your computation, but also entering a subsession or "dialog" to inspect its state.