This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
food and
drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review
WP:Trivia and
WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects,
select here.
In its introduction and Etymology sections, this article does a good job of describing the two meanings of the word. Then, with no clarification, the History and Biscuits today sections talk only about the British meaning. IMHO this is misleading and unencyclopedic.
There is a separate article on the American biscuit, but no separate article on the British. It seems to me that both should be covered in one article or, possibly better, this article, plus one on the British biscuit and another on the American one.
Lou Sander (
talk)
13:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)reply
The USA is the only anglophone country (with the exception of certain parts of Canada) where they call a scone a biscuit, yet the article talks about 'global confusion' over the definition. Isn't this a little USA-centric? Perhaps, the USA definition should redirect to the article about scones? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
188.220.70.14 (
talk)
02:03, 20 October 2012 (UTC)reply
American biscuits aren't scones. Scones are quickbreads. American biscuits aren't. You'd know if you've had both (I have). This article is decidedly "Americans are dumb in their nomenclature" slanted. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
72.195.128.195 (
talk)
16:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)reply
I've never seen an American biscuit. Could you explain how it differs from a scone? I don't see any anti-American bias in the article. Which sentences need cleaning up?
Dbfirs21:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)reply
American biscuits are made with baking soda and/or baking powder, never yeast, so I'm not sure why the above poster thinks they're not quick breads. In American usage, biscuits are always round and usually unsweetened and unflavored, where scones are usually triangular and contain fruit, nuts or flavorings. But then, if you gave an American a round scone with raisins in it, we'd probably call it a raisin biscuit; a plain triangular scone, some would probably call a scone and some a biscuit. Others might also argue that American scones are made with less fat and are thus much drier and harder.
Ibadibam (
talk)
00:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)reply
Thanks for clarifying the American version. UK scones are usually round with fruit, but they can be made plain or with cheese. Would a UK unsweetened plain scone be the same as an American biscuit? The standard British plain scone (according to the "Be-Ro" recipe book) is made with 8oz flour and 1+1⁄2 oz fat together with milk, salt and baking powder (or SR flour).
Dbfirs07:55, 21 March 2013 (UTC)reply
By my understanding (and it's been a while since I've been to London and eaten a scone), the plain English scone is identical in essence to the standard American biscuit, with slight variations possible in ingredients and preparation. When sweetened, sometimes it's still called a biscuit, sometimes a scone, sometimes shortbread. When savo(u)ry ingredients are added, again, sometimes it's still called a biscuit, sometimes a scone. But when it's triangular, it's almost always a scone.
One source of confusion may be the fact that there is not much of a "scone tradition" in the U.S., so most Americans in the present day probably associate scones with what's sold at bakeries and coffee shops, where they are made larger and denser so as to have a longer shelf life. Biscuits, on the other hand, are either served at restaurants or at home, and are fresher and often warm.
There's also the issue of marketing and intended use. All we're really talking about here is a small quickbread, and the vendor or recipe author may choose to call it whatever they like. In a way, the name is dependent on how and when the food is eaten.
Biscuit (U.S.): Round in shape, eaten with/as a main course, especially with breakfast or a meal of
Southern cuisine
Scone (U.S.): Triangular in shape, usually eaten at breakfast, brunch, or as a snack with tea or coffee
Shortcake: eaten for dessert, nearly always with fruit
For maximal precision, we could have three articles, Scone, Cookie and Cracker, with Biscuit (disambiguation) pointing to all three. This would probably please no one: it is neither
natural nor recognizable. So what we probably want is:
Biscuit (bread)
Biscuit - refers only to the globally understood meaning of biscuit, move all bread content to Biscuit (bread), add a hatnote like:
This article is about the unleavened, sweet or savoury baked good. For the bread product, see
Biscuit (bread). For other uses, see
Biscuit (disambiguation).
Scone - add a see-also hatnote on the Americas section, pointing to Biscuit (bread)
For all who see this, especially previous commenters
Ibadibam,
Dbfirs and
Dougweller: The two types of biscuit still cause confusion. The
Biscuit (bread) article does a good job with its subject, but is hard to find for Americans who don't know about the other kind. This article,
Biscuit does a good job with the hard kind, but its title doesn't specify which kind it is about, which is somewhat puzzling to Yanks, etc. Much confusion could be eliminated if the title of this article clearly specified that it is about the hard kind of biscuit. Hopefully, there is a name for that kind. Then we could have two articles: Biscuit (bread) and Biscuit (whatever). Each article could refer to the long Biscuit (disambiguation) page, and could primarily cover its own type of biscuit, maybe with a few words about the other of the two main meanings of the word. The problem for me is coming up with the (whatever). Any suggestions?
Lou Sander (
talk)
13:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
After a bit of looking around, maybe there should be
Biscuit (Commonwealth English) and
Biscuit (American English). Maybe there could also be just plain Biscuit, which could have the first paragraph of the current
Biscuit article, the picture of the two types, and maybe a bit of comparative etymology, with prominent links to the American and Commonwealth biscuit articles, and a hatnote about disambiguation. As mentioned somewhere above, these foods are culturally important in their respective lands; Wikipedia should be very clear about the differences, and IMHO we aren't quite there yet.
Lou Sander (
talk)
14:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Yes, I agree that the articles are still not as clear as they could be. Perhaps your split would work, with this article being about the history of the word, with clear links to articles on the the two very different products at the top, but then where would you put details of continental biscuits that tend not to be hard? Are British-style biscuits not seen in Canada?
Dbfirs20:52, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
I don't know anything about continental biscuits that tend to be hard, and I don't know if British-style biscuits are seen in Canada. I DO know that they are seen here in the U.S., and that it's easy to distinguish between the two types -- they look different, they feel different in the mouth, they taste different, they are sold in different departments of the market, etc. IMHO, the article(s) should explain the differences. Maybe they should be
Biscuit (bread) and
Biscuit (twice-baked product). I'm not ADVOCATING that; just suggesting it as a possible solution to a thorny problem. As I think about it, though, it seems to me that the true difference is in the form of English that applies to the word, even though there may be some overlap in the usage.
Lou Sander (
talk)
15:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)reply
One Wikipedia article should be about one topic. This one is about two different things and these should be two different articles. One should say "In the USA a biscuit is..." and the other should say "In most English speaking countries a biscuit is...". The current opening violates the
wp:refers guidelines, in my opinion. See also
content split guidelines. Tayste (
edits)21:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
The problem is that both meanings are found in many countries (including America and the UK), and there are some products that are part-way between. All varieties started from the same origins, they just diverged in different ways. Your suggestion would solve the argument over varieties of English.
Dbfirs21:11, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
The article could safely be about the topic of "the word biscuit and how it has evolved", but the current article seems unclear in its scope. (I was just considering rewriting the opaque "See also: Biscuit (bread) and Cookie" hatnote as "This article is about X. For Y, see..." but couldn't work out quite what this article actually thought it was about.) --
McGeddon (
talk)
11:34, 16 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Given the current organization of articles, this page is about the General/British usage-term, which encompasses a variety of sweet and savory baked goods that are generally flat and crispy, while
Biscuit (bread) is for the other one. I recommend we rewrite the lead paragraph to reflect this.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:32, 16 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Good idea! I changed the introduction to do that, stating that this article is about the flat, crispy kind, and that readers should look to
Biscuit (bread) for the softer, leavened kind. I propose to remove the "North America" subsection at the bottom of this article, just to make that point more strongly.
Lou Sander (
talk)
02:01, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
How are we distinguishing between the biscuit and the
cookie (which has its own article)? Crisp versus chewy? Or should we be merging these articles? --
McGeddon (
talk)
08:40, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Good question! As an American who eats a lot of baked goods, I perfectly understand what a
Biscuit (bread) is to us/me. The article with that name covers it accurately and in depth. I also perfectly understand what a
cookie is to us/me; they can be hard like
Oreos or soft like
Fig Newtons, and they are always sweet. Their article covers them accurately and in depth. I know that non-Americans call them
biscuits. I'm slightly aware that non-American biscuits, unlike cookies, can be savoury as well as sweet. I know that what we call
crackers can be savory, sweet, or neither. Some of the sweet ones, notably
graham crackers and
animal crackers, might be a bit cookie-like, but nevertheless are crackers, and are marked as such on their boxes.
Lou Sander (
talk)
09:13, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
See if this comes close (I'm American so I'm basing this on what I've read here and on internet forums − feel free to edit this):
The outlier being that in parts of Scotland, "cookie" can mean what most Britons call a "bun" and what Americans would either call a "bun" or "roll". (And that Americans have no real descriptor for what
the British call crackers.)
Ibadibam (
talk)
19:07, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
In any event,I am an American who has always regarded "biscuit" as a synonym for "cracker",and been annoyed by people on either side of the Atlantic applying the word to either cookies or those hexagonal bread-rolls.--L.E/
12.144.5.2 (
talk)
05:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)reply
I suggest the elimination of this article and to re-title the article of
Cookie as Biscuit (cookie) and the difference of the meanings can be discussed in the article itself. As for the article
Biscuit (bread), well, this one should remain as it is.
86.96.102.224 (
talk)
18:09, 13 March 2020 (UTC)reply
British English
An IP editor recently changed the spelling to American English. I think this edit
[1] established British English, so I reverted the change. Please correct if my analysis is in error. The article is about biscuits worldwide.
Dbfirs09:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
If you look at any of the edits before the one you chose, you would see that they were all in American English. It's fine to make the article about biscuits and british cookies, but, the article started out using American English (if nothing else, putting jam on a biscuit to a brit would be akin to an American putting jell-o on a cookie, something I don't think was meant)...so I've reverted back to the original form of english. Cheerio! — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:E8B9:7180:BB14:96AA (
talk)
20:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Well, no. The current article is about biscuits world-wide. The variety of English for the article was established by the first regional spelling in the difference to which I linked. This is how Wikipedia works. See
WP:ENGVAR: "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary." and "the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default. If no English variety was used consistently, the tie is broken by the first post-stub contributor to introduce text written in a particular English variety."Dbfirs20:37, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Look in any British supermarket and you will see "blackcurrent jelly" (and other varieties) as fruit preserves. Use of "Jello" would have established ENGVAR. Sorry, mate.
Dbfirs21:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
An American editor started the article about an obviously American topic. By Engvar then, it has strong national ties to America, as it is a bona fide cultural food in the south. You are not correct in assuming that the usual parlance for jelly is a fruit preserve and not jello. As it stands, nobody puts Jello on their biscuits, only jam or jelly (or perhaps butter/margarine). As you stated that, you basically agreed that this started in American English. You are mistaken, mate, in thinking that this is at all a british topic. Sorry, the sun has set on this article being falsely in british english — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:E8B9:7180:BB14:96AA (
talk)
21:48, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I'm fully aware of the difference between Jello and jelly. My point was that we have both jelly and jam as fruit preserves to put on scones on this side of the pond, so use of the word jelly does not establish American English. The article as it stands is about biscuits throughout the world.
Dbfirs21:58, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Putting a British English tag on the article doesn't make it so. The article was started in, and still is, in American English. This is an article about...biscuits. Honestly. It was started in one variety of english. I was rolling back obvious AmEn to BrEn engvar violations, noticed it, and changed it back. Not a huge problem, except I can see you've been commenting on this issue for 4 years. I take it you really really like cookies? If I go to
Jelly the UK definition is "Gelatin dessert, referred to as jelly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other countries"
The article
biscuit was originally created with US focus and gradually came to encompass all foods called biscuit. In January 2010,
Trident13raised a discussion, the ultimate outcome of which was to split off the US food to
biscuit (bread), leaving the remaining page solely covering the Commonwealth-English sense of the word. The effective result of the expansion and split of the biscuit article is that the original article was moved and the current article created in its place (it just happens that two articles existed on the same page for a number of years, employing the simultaneous use of differing English variants in different sections). I would consider this revision as the earliest version of the current article, and the one that should be considered for ENGVAR.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:00, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Thank you for a third opinion, Ibadibam. I appreciate that the history is complicated by the split. The
biscuit (bread) article correctly uses American English, but this article should correctly retain British English as per the oldest version you mention above, and also according to the usual rule determined by the first regional spelling in 2004.
Dbfirs21:13, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
For the record, I'm not your official third opinion, but rather an editor who has been active in maintaining and discussing this page for some time. I would still welcome a contribution from a disinterested party via 3-O.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:27, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Apologies for the misunderstanding, but thank you anyway for your analysis. I look forward to an independent opinion from a disinterested party.
Dbfirs21:32, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I respectfully disagree with Ibadiabam's analysis . This article was started in one sense of the word. If anything, the British English sense of the word (cookie) should be a disambiguation, as opposed to the original purpose of the article, and truer sense of the word and meaning, and more widely acknowledged and used sense of the word, being relegated to a mere disambiguation. British English should not get automatic top placement solely because of sneak editors trying to use creeping britishisms to overtake wikipedia. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:4CA0:A05B:AE5A:9A66 (
talk)
06:47, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I understand your viewpoint, but the current article is about world usage of the term, and there is now a
separate article for American usage. There were no sneak editors, and from this side of the pond it seems as if American editors are taking over. Wikipedia tries to be fair to all varieties of the language. The only other solution would be to have separate editions for the two main varieties of English, and this has been suggested, but it has many disadvantages.
Dbfirs08:29, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Anonymous editor, if your objection is to the scope of the current article, that's a topic for another discussion. The current article scope was not arrived at by "sneak editors" but by consensus through discussion (to which I have already linked in my first comment above). What you're doing now, however, is circumventing discussion by edit warring, which is not helping your case. I'm willing to enter into a
request for comment on the organization and perspective of the information in
biscuit,
biscuit (bread) and
biscuit (disambiguation), if you're willing to respect the process by not editing the pages in the meantime. However, if you continue to repeat your changes to the article and the header of this talk page, the likelihood is that the pages will be semi-protected and you will not be able to represent your viewpoint.
Ibadibam (
talk)
19:39, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
There should not be an argument about American editors taking over. However there is a fundamental problem with the approach Wikipedia takes. The language adopted by the original editor of an article is inherently an arbitrary choice for the spelling then locked into the article. The more sophisticated approach would be to adopt standard (ie. British) spelling everywhere. American English is a non-standard variety of English. British English is not a variant of American English, but the other way around. This article is about a term most commonly used in British English, not American English, so British English would be more appropriate even with the current rules
Royalcourtier (
talk)
22:11, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
U.K. article?
Can someone please explain to me how the UK "biscuit" takes precedence over the American one, which has been segregated to
Biscuit_(bread)? One of these countries has five times the population of the other (and roughly that many English speakers), exports a significantly larger number of products, and actually started the article (as well as the site it is on).
This is going to be confusing for the three hundred million other people who may someday type "biscuit" into the search box and get presented with an article about afternoon tea pairings.
98.19.243.198 (
talk)
19:06, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
But this article isn't about "afternoon tea" biscuits, it's about the history of the word and covers both UK and US meanings. --
McGeddon (
talk)
19:17, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
The current
Biscuit page is a weird article that's the product of an odd sort of armistice. Most of its content is about the International English sense of "biscuit", since the other meaning is covered in depth at
Biscuit (bread). But because of the regional split, we've left in a lot of the content about the latter, and done our best to explain the distinction. Most of the recent discussion about this effort is above, in
#Two articles?, and I invite the anonymous original poster to join that discussion once they have read through the prior comments. To directly speak to the poster's points: Although Wikimedia is headquartered in the United States, the intended audience for its projects, including English Wikipedia, is the entire world, and that means writing in a way that is as broad as that audience. There are approximately 942 million English speakers in the world (taking
L1 and L2 together). About 278 million of these speak North American English (combining totals from
American English and
Canadian English, and even then, not all Canadians use "biscuit" in that way). That leaves at least 664 million people, distributed around the world (i.e. 70% of the global English-speaking world), for whom a "biscuit" is not a type of quick bread. That there are more internet users in North America means that Wikipedia often exhibits
systemic bias, which we try to counter as we're able. So in that spirit, and even as an American myself, I think it's preferable to consider the American sense of the word to be secondary.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:16, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
I think the clue would be in the name, England is part of the UK. So English people's usage takes precedent given how its their language. Just how French spoken in France takes precedent over that in Quebec. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
95.151.45.230 (
talk)
23:28, 3 February 2018 (UTC)reply
External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on
Biscuit. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}).
YAn editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with
this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with
this tool.
I have just modified 2 external links on
Biscuit. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
An image in the wiki shows Biscuits from Ghana. However, most of those biscuits are found almost worldwide. They do not belong only to Ghana. For example, that image has biscuits which exist in India as well, like Rusk, GoodDay, Hodlicks, as well as a cup of chai.
SunnyandBunny 21 (
talk)
05:49, 7 May 2023 (UTC)reply
"Biscuit" and "cookie"
Question from an Italian: if "biscuit" (British English) and "cookie" (American English) are, practically, the same thing, why are there two different pages,
cookie and this one (
biscuit)?
JacktheBrown (
talk)
22:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Because if there were only one article, it would be at biscuit (as cookies are a type of bikkie), thereby the American usage would not get its own article. And we can't have that, can we?
Local Potentate (
talk)
10:19, 25 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
food and
drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review
WP:Trivia and
WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects,
select here.
In its introduction and Etymology sections, this article does a good job of describing the two meanings of the word. Then, with no clarification, the History and Biscuits today sections talk only about the British meaning. IMHO this is misleading and unencyclopedic.
There is a separate article on the American biscuit, but no separate article on the British. It seems to me that both should be covered in one article or, possibly better, this article, plus one on the British biscuit and another on the American one.
Lou Sander (
talk)
13:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)reply
The USA is the only anglophone country (with the exception of certain parts of Canada) where they call a scone a biscuit, yet the article talks about 'global confusion' over the definition. Isn't this a little USA-centric? Perhaps, the USA definition should redirect to the article about scones? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
188.220.70.14 (
talk)
02:03, 20 October 2012 (UTC)reply
American biscuits aren't scones. Scones are quickbreads. American biscuits aren't. You'd know if you've had both (I have). This article is decidedly "Americans are dumb in their nomenclature" slanted. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
72.195.128.195 (
talk)
16:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)reply
I've never seen an American biscuit. Could you explain how it differs from a scone? I don't see any anti-American bias in the article. Which sentences need cleaning up?
Dbfirs21:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)reply
American biscuits are made with baking soda and/or baking powder, never yeast, so I'm not sure why the above poster thinks they're not quick breads. In American usage, biscuits are always round and usually unsweetened and unflavored, where scones are usually triangular and contain fruit, nuts or flavorings. But then, if you gave an American a round scone with raisins in it, we'd probably call it a raisin biscuit; a plain triangular scone, some would probably call a scone and some a biscuit. Others might also argue that American scones are made with less fat and are thus much drier and harder.
Ibadibam (
talk)
00:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)reply
Thanks for clarifying the American version. UK scones are usually round with fruit, but they can be made plain or with cheese. Would a UK unsweetened plain scone be the same as an American biscuit? The standard British plain scone (according to the "Be-Ro" recipe book) is made with 8oz flour and 1+1⁄2 oz fat together with milk, salt and baking powder (or SR flour).
Dbfirs07:55, 21 March 2013 (UTC)reply
By my understanding (and it's been a while since I've been to London and eaten a scone), the plain English scone is identical in essence to the standard American biscuit, with slight variations possible in ingredients and preparation. When sweetened, sometimes it's still called a biscuit, sometimes a scone, sometimes shortbread. When savo(u)ry ingredients are added, again, sometimes it's still called a biscuit, sometimes a scone. But when it's triangular, it's almost always a scone.
One source of confusion may be the fact that there is not much of a "scone tradition" in the U.S., so most Americans in the present day probably associate scones with what's sold at bakeries and coffee shops, where they are made larger and denser so as to have a longer shelf life. Biscuits, on the other hand, are either served at restaurants or at home, and are fresher and often warm.
There's also the issue of marketing and intended use. All we're really talking about here is a small quickbread, and the vendor or recipe author may choose to call it whatever they like. In a way, the name is dependent on how and when the food is eaten.
Biscuit (U.S.): Round in shape, eaten with/as a main course, especially with breakfast or a meal of
Southern cuisine
Scone (U.S.): Triangular in shape, usually eaten at breakfast, brunch, or as a snack with tea or coffee
Shortcake: eaten for dessert, nearly always with fruit
For maximal precision, we could have three articles, Scone, Cookie and Cracker, with Biscuit (disambiguation) pointing to all three. This would probably please no one: it is neither
natural nor recognizable. So what we probably want is:
Biscuit (bread)
Biscuit - refers only to the globally understood meaning of biscuit, move all bread content to Biscuit (bread), add a hatnote like:
This article is about the unleavened, sweet or savoury baked good. For the bread product, see
Biscuit (bread). For other uses, see
Biscuit (disambiguation).
Scone - add a see-also hatnote on the Americas section, pointing to Biscuit (bread)
For all who see this, especially previous commenters
Ibadibam,
Dbfirs and
Dougweller: The two types of biscuit still cause confusion. The
Biscuit (bread) article does a good job with its subject, but is hard to find for Americans who don't know about the other kind. This article,
Biscuit does a good job with the hard kind, but its title doesn't specify which kind it is about, which is somewhat puzzling to Yanks, etc. Much confusion could be eliminated if the title of this article clearly specified that it is about the hard kind of biscuit. Hopefully, there is a name for that kind. Then we could have two articles: Biscuit (bread) and Biscuit (whatever). Each article could refer to the long Biscuit (disambiguation) page, and could primarily cover its own type of biscuit, maybe with a few words about the other of the two main meanings of the word. The problem for me is coming up with the (whatever). Any suggestions?
Lou Sander (
talk)
13:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
After a bit of looking around, maybe there should be
Biscuit (Commonwealth English) and
Biscuit (American English). Maybe there could also be just plain Biscuit, which could have the first paragraph of the current
Biscuit article, the picture of the two types, and maybe a bit of comparative etymology, with prominent links to the American and Commonwealth biscuit articles, and a hatnote about disambiguation. As mentioned somewhere above, these foods are culturally important in their respective lands; Wikipedia should be very clear about the differences, and IMHO we aren't quite there yet.
Lou Sander (
talk)
14:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Yes, I agree that the articles are still not as clear as they could be. Perhaps your split would work, with this article being about the history of the word, with clear links to articles on the the two very different products at the top, but then where would you put details of continental biscuits that tend not to be hard? Are British-style biscuits not seen in Canada?
Dbfirs20:52, 23 November 2013 (UTC)reply
I don't know anything about continental biscuits that tend to be hard, and I don't know if British-style biscuits are seen in Canada. I DO know that they are seen here in the U.S., and that it's easy to distinguish between the two types -- they look different, they feel different in the mouth, they taste different, they are sold in different departments of the market, etc. IMHO, the article(s) should explain the differences. Maybe they should be
Biscuit (bread) and
Biscuit (twice-baked product). I'm not ADVOCATING that; just suggesting it as a possible solution to a thorny problem. As I think about it, though, it seems to me that the true difference is in the form of English that applies to the word, even though there may be some overlap in the usage.
Lou Sander (
talk)
15:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)reply
One Wikipedia article should be about one topic. This one is about two different things and these should be two different articles. One should say "In the USA a biscuit is..." and the other should say "In most English speaking countries a biscuit is...". The current opening violates the
wp:refers guidelines, in my opinion. See also
content split guidelines. Tayste (
edits)21:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
The problem is that both meanings are found in many countries (including America and the UK), and there are some products that are part-way between. All varieties started from the same origins, they just diverged in different ways. Your suggestion would solve the argument over varieties of English.
Dbfirs21:11, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
The article could safely be about the topic of "the word biscuit and how it has evolved", but the current article seems unclear in its scope. (I was just considering rewriting the opaque "See also: Biscuit (bread) and Cookie" hatnote as "This article is about X. For Y, see..." but couldn't work out quite what this article actually thought it was about.) --
McGeddon (
talk)
11:34, 16 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Given the current organization of articles, this page is about the General/British usage-term, which encompasses a variety of sweet and savory baked goods that are generally flat and crispy, while
Biscuit (bread) is for the other one. I recommend we rewrite the lead paragraph to reflect this.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:32, 16 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Good idea! I changed the introduction to do that, stating that this article is about the flat, crispy kind, and that readers should look to
Biscuit (bread) for the softer, leavened kind. I propose to remove the "North America" subsection at the bottom of this article, just to make that point more strongly.
Lou Sander (
talk)
02:01, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
How are we distinguishing between the biscuit and the
cookie (which has its own article)? Crisp versus chewy? Or should we be merging these articles? --
McGeddon (
talk)
08:40, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Good question! As an American who eats a lot of baked goods, I perfectly understand what a
Biscuit (bread) is to us/me. The article with that name covers it accurately and in depth. I also perfectly understand what a
cookie is to us/me; they can be hard like
Oreos or soft like
Fig Newtons, and they are always sweet. Their article covers them accurately and in depth. I know that non-Americans call them
biscuits. I'm slightly aware that non-American biscuits, unlike cookies, can be savoury as well as sweet. I know that what we call
crackers can be savory, sweet, or neither. Some of the sweet ones, notably
graham crackers and
animal crackers, might be a bit cookie-like, but nevertheless are crackers, and are marked as such on their boxes.
Lou Sander (
talk)
09:13, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
See if this comes close (I'm American so I'm basing this on what I've read here and on internet forums − feel free to edit this):
The outlier being that in parts of Scotland, "cookie" can mean what most Britons call a "bun" and what Americans would either call a "bun" or "roll". (And that Americans have no real descriptor for what
the British call crackers.)
Ibadibam (
talk)
19:07, 17 May 2016 (UTC)reply
In any event,I am an American who has always regarded "biscuit" as a synonym for "cracker",and been annoyed by people on either side of the Atlantic applying the word to either cookies or those hexagonal bread-rolls.--L.E/
12.144.5.2 (
talk)
05:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)reply
I suggest the elimination of this article and to re-title the article of
Cookie as Biscuit (cookie) and the difference of the meanings can be discussed in the article itself. As for the article
Biscuit (bread), well, this one should remain as it is.
86.96.102.224 (
talk)
18:09, 13 March 2020 (UTC)reply
British English
An IP editor recently changed the spelling to American English. I think this edit
[1] established British English, so I reverted the change. Please correct if my analysis is in error. The article is about biscuits worldwide.
Dbfirs09:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
If you look at any of the edits before the one you chose, you would see that they were all in American English. It's fine to make the article about biscuits and british cookies, but, the article started out using American English (if nothing else, putting jam on a biscuit to a brit would be akin to an American putting jell-o on a cookie, something I don't think was meant)...so I've reverted back to the original form of english. Cheerio! — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:E8B9:7180:BB14:96AA (
talk)
20:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Well, no. The current article is about biscuits world-wide. The variety of English for the article was established by the first regional spelling in the difference to which I linked. This is how Wikipedia works. See
WP:ENGVAR: "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary." and "the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default. If no English variety was used consistently, the tie is broken by the first post-stub contributor to introduce text written in a particular English variety."Dbfirs20:37, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Look in any British supermarket and you will see "blackcurrent jelly" (and other varieties) as fruit preserves. Use of "Jello" would have established ENGVAR. Sorry, mate.
Dbfirs21:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
An American editor started the article about an obviously American topic. By Engvar then, it has strong national ties to America, as it is a bona fide cultural food in the south. You are not correct in assuming that the usual parlance for jelly is a fruit preserve and not jello. As it stands, nobody puts Jello on their biscuits, only jam or jelly (or perhaps butter/margarine). As you stated that, you basically agreed that this started in American English. You are mistaken, mate, in thinking that this is at all a british topic. Sorry, the sun has set on this article being falsely in british english — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:E8B9:7180:BB14:96AA (
talk)
21:48, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I'm fully aware of the difference between Jello and jelly. My point was that we have both jelly and jam as fruit preserves to put on scones on this side of the pond, so use of the word jelly does not establish American English. The article as it stands is about biscuits throughout the world.
Dbfirs21:58, 7 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Putting a British English tag on the article doesn't make it so. The article was started in, and still is, in American English. This is an article about...biscuits. Honestly. It was started in one variety of english. I was rolling back obvious AmEn to BrEn engvar violations, noticed it, and changed it back. Not a huge problem, except I can see you've been commenting on this issue for 4 years. I take it you really really like cookies? If I go to
Jelly the UK definition is "Gelatin dessert, referred to as jelly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other countries"
The article
biscuit was originally created with US focus and gradually came to encompass all foods called biscuit. In January 2010,
Trident13raised a discussion, the ultimate outcome of which was to split off the US food to
biscuit (bread), leaving the remaining page solely covering the Commonwealth-English sense of the word. The effective result of the expansion and split of the biscuit article is that the original article was moved and the current article created in its place (it just happens that two articles existed on the same page for a number of years, employing the simultaneous use of differing English variants in different sections). I would consider this revision as the earliest version of the current article, and the one that should be considered for ENGVAR.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:00, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Thank you for a third opinion, Ibadibam. I appreciate that the history is complicated by the split. The
biscuit (bread) article correctly uses American English, but this article should correctly retain British English as per the oldest version you mention above, and also according to the usual rule determined by the first regional spelling in 2004.
Dbfirs21:13, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
For the record, I'm not your official third opinion, but rather an editor who has been active in maintaining and discussing this page for some time. I would still welcome a contribution from a disinterested party via 3-O.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:27, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Apologies for the misunderstanding, but thank you anyway for your analysis. I look forward to an independent opinion from a disinterested party.
Dbfirs21:32, 8 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I respectfully disagree with Ibadiabam's analysis . This article was started in one sense of the word. If anything, the British English sense of the word (cookie) should be a disambiguation, as opposed to the original purpose of the article, and truer sense of the word and meaning, and more widely acknowledged and used sense of the word, being relegated to a mere disambiguation. British English should not get automatic top placement solely because of sneak editors trying to use creeping britishisms to overtake wikipedia. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
2A02:C7D:CA0D:8C00:4CA0:A05B:AE5A:9A66 (
talk)
06:47, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
I understand your viewpoint, but the current article is about world usage of the term, and there is now a
separate article for American usage. There were no sneak editors, and from this side of the pond it seems as if American editors are taking over. Wikipedia tries to be fair to all varieties of the language. The only other solution would be to have separate editions for the two main varieties of English, and this has been suggested, but it has many disadvantages.
Dbfirs08:29, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Anonymous editor, if your objection is to the scope of the current article, that's a topic for another discussion. The current article scope was not arrived at by "sneak editors" but by consensus through discussion (to which I have already linked in my first comment above). What you're doing now, however, is circumventing discussion by edit warring, which is not helping your case. I'm willing to enter into a
request for comment on the organization and perspective of the information in
biscuit,
biscuit (bread) and
biscuit (disambiguation), if you're willing to respect the process by not editing the pages in the meantime. However, if you continue to repeat your changes to the article and the header of this talk page, the likelihood is that the pages will be semi-protected and you will not be able to represent your viewpoint.
Ibadibam (
talk)
19:39, 15 March 2016 (UTC)reply
There should not be an argument about American editors taking over. However there is a fundamental problem with the approach Wikipedia takes. The language adopted by the original editor of an article is inherently an arbitrary choice for the spelling then locked into the article. The more sophisticated approach would be to adopt standard (ie. British) spelling everywhere. American English is a non-standard variety of English. British English is not a variant of American English, but the other way around. This article is about a term most commonly used in British English, not American English, so British English would be more appropriate even with the current rules
Royalcourtier (
talk)
22:11, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
U.K. article?
Can someone please explain to me how the UK "biscuit" takes precedence over the American one, which has been segregated to
Biscuit_(bread)? One of these countries has five times the population of the other (and roughly that many English speakers), exports a significantly larger number of products, and actually started the article (as well as the site it is on).
This is going to be confusing for the three hundred million other people who may someday type "biscuit" into the search box and get presented with an article about afternoon tea pairings.
98.19.243.198 (
talk)
19:06, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
But this article isn't about "afternoon tea" biscuits, it's about the history of the word and covers both UK and US meanings. --
McGeddon (
talk)
19:17, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
The current
Biscuit page is a weird article that's the product of an odd sort of armistice. Most of its content is about the International English sense of "biscuit", since the other meaning is covered in depth at
Biscuit (bread). But because of the regional split, we've left in a lot of the content about the latter, and done our best to explain the distinction. Most of the recent discussion about this effort is above, in
#Two articles?, and I invite the anonymous original poster to join that discussion once they have read through the prior comments. To directly speak to the poster's points: Although Wikimedia is headquartered in the United States, the intended audience for its projects, including English Wikipedia, is the entire world, and that means writing in a way that is as broad as that audience. There are approximately 942 million English speakers in the world (taking
L1 and L2 together). About 278 million of these speak North American English (combining totals from
American English and
Canadian English, and even then, not all Canadians use "biscuit" in that way). That leaves at least 664 million people, distributed around the world (i.e. 70% of the global English-speaking world), for whom a "biscuit" is not a type of quick bread. That there are more internet users in North America means that Wikipedia often exhibits
systemic bias, which we try to counter as we're able. So in that spirit, and even as an American myself, I think it's preferable to consider the American sense of the word to be secondary.
Ibadibam (
talk)
21:16, 10 August 2016 (UTC)reply
I think the clue would be in the name, England is part of the UK. So English people's usage takes precedent given how its their language. Just how French spoken in France takes precedent over that in Quebec. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
95.151.45.230 (
talk)
23:28, 3 February 2018 (UTC)reply
External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on
Biscuit. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}).
YAn editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with
this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with
this tool.
I have just modified 2 external links on
Biscuit. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
An image in the wiki shows Biscuits from Ghana. However, most of those biscuits are found almost worldwide. They do not belong only to Ghana. For example, that image has biscuits which exist in India as well, like Rusk, GoodDay, Hodlicks, as well as a cup of chai.
SunnyandBunny 21 (
talk)
05:49, 7 May 2023 (UTC)reply
"Biscuit" and "cookie"
Question from an Italian: if "biscuit" (British English) and "cookie" (American English) are, practically, the same thing, why are there two different pages,
cookie and this one (
biscuit)?
JacktheBrown (
talk)
22:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Because if there were only one article, it would be at biscuit (as cookies are a type of bikkie), thereby the American usage would not get its own article. And we can't have that, can we?
Local Potentate (
talk)
10:19, 25 April 2024 (UTC)reply