Welcome to my perfumed garden

to me, it depends on the exact word. 'tyre' gets me every time, because it looks like a completely different word, not just 'tire' in 'british'.

honour/honor and color/colour will sometimes get me, but it usually depends on context.

otoh, i flow right over the z/s thing - realize/realise, recognize/recognise... i'm actually at the point where i don't know which of those is 'correct' american spelling anymore.

then there are the weird small things. i love Gil Hale, and she does an excellent job americanizing her fic, but it totally drives me crazy when she has someone 'ring up' some one else. in america, they *call* you... the weirdest thing about this is that i didn't catch until i was re-reading her stuff, which tells you how good she is!

any, back to the point. it depends on context, and exactly which spellings it is. i'm more likely to be picky about a fic set in modern-day times. that may, in fact, be the whole of my reaction to 'tyre' - it may look extremely old-fashioned to me. but by the same token, if the piece is set more than 100yrs ago, british spellings don't bother me as much, and i tend to think of them as adding to the atmosphere of the piece. even if it's an american piece.

i don't know if that makes sense, but i hope it helps.

-bs