David Friedland wrote:
See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]
It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks"
When people write for a wide audience, I often see "thousand million", which is less graceful, but unambiguous. Alternatively, [[milliard]] is a quick way to inform the person unfamiliar with the term (and it forestalls editors "fixing" the "thousand million" usage).
Good writing for the rocket/arugula case would say "rocket lettuce" or "arugula lettuce", and/or link them, because a reader from India will probably not recognize either term!
It's certainly possible for Americans to use terms that mystify others - even the OED doesn't know "bumbershoot", without which the Seattle festival is unintelligible - and likewise for other dialects, but our goal should be to explain it all, not try to cover it up.
Anyway, there are a bunch of Britishisms I prefer, like "US" instead of "U.S.", so there's no preference setting that would be completely satisfactory to me. There are also subdialects to think of; US military usage is closer to British English than civilian usage, due to years of NATO coordination.
Stan