Learn English – Meaning of phrase with “to allow for”

meaning

What means "The talk needs to be approximately 45 mins to allow for 15 mins of Q&A’s."

Does it mean that the talk needs to be 45 mins and additional 15 mins will be for questions? So the whole thing will take 60 mins.

Or the whole process will take 45 mins – like while talking during that time 15 mins will be taken for questions?

Please clarify. Thanks

Best Answer

Definition of "allow for" from Wiktionary:

To take into account when making plans.
The problem is that they didn't allow for the extra centimetre of overlap. So it didn't fit correctly.

The whole time is 60 minutes. If it was 45, it would say

The talk needs to be approximately 45 mins including 15 mins of Q&A’s.

It would help to know the context, but that sentence strongly implies that whoever is giving the talk has been allotted 60 minutes, so the talk needs to be limited to 45 minutes so that there are still at least 15 minutes left for Q&A.

In other words, since you only have 60 minutes, you must limit the talk to allow for Q&A time.

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