Ohhh... You've hit upon one of my favourite topics! :-) There is *sooooo* much I could write now, that I don't even know where to begin. I'll limit myself to commenting on Alisha's list and relaying a personal anecdote or two. Incidentally, whole books have been written about this topic. Before my first trip to Great Britain, I bought Norman Moss' book "Travel Guide to British/American English".
Alisha, the term "curriculum vitae," or "CV," is also used here, but it is not synonymous with "resume". The former is restricted to the document used when applying for a job within academia. CVs tend to be longer and more detailed than resumes.
The only time I've heard Americans use "knickers" for modern apparel is in the sentence, "Don't get your knickers in a knot." The folks who have said it have tended to be Anglophiles, so I suspect that it might not be a common usage within the U.S. I think "knickers" is also used here as a synonym of "bloomers" to refer to the underwear which ladies wore in bygone eras -- the ones that were knee-length or so.
I have been exposed to British literature and television since I was a very young child, and I have a tendency to use Britishisms and British spellings myself. (I am therefore not a very good source for what a typical American would use, incidentally. And unfortunately, I have had to put most of my language references in storage.) In fact, I distinctly remember getting "color" wrong on a spelling test because I spelled it "colour". I had been quite upset about that, because I *knew* I had read that spelling in a printed book. When I mentioned that to the teacher, she just said that I was wrong - end of discussion. It was only years later that I figured out on my own that Great Britain and the U.S. use different orthographies. My own spelling tends to be a blend of the two -- I will usually use the -our and -re endings, but will stick with the -ize suffix.
It's what works for me. When I write L&C fanfic, however, I try to use the more typical American spellings, simply because the show and the characters are American. There are a few words (e.g., grey/gray, traveler/traveller) for which I can never remember which side of the puddle uses which spelling.
When I see British spellings when reading L&C fanfic, they do not bother me in the slightest. I might make a mental note to see where in the world the author is from, but that is about it. British vocabulary items and phrasing (e.g., "in hospital" vs. "in the hospital") only faze me when they are put into the mouth or the pen of an American character. As part of the main narrative, they pose no problem for me.
Joy,
Lynn
