Most of the men's clothing fit problems on this side of the pond are because the garments are too big. There are three reasons for this:
1) Our preoccupation with being comfortable, and somehow believing that roomier always means more comfortable.
2) Companies making more clothing to fit the wide variety of American body types, which means bigger.
3) The relative ease of convincing a customer that too big is just right: "you need some room in there" is easy to say, whereas you could never convince someone that a garment fits if it's actually too tight.
Because of this, some of the below shows a bias towards making things smaller.
Fit the body first. This means trim on your chest. If you can grab more than a handful of fabric here, it's too big.
Fit the shoulders. They should allow movement, but you don't need to practice your pitching windup in the fitting room to see if there's enough room; you don't pitch baseball in dress shirts, do you? The yoke of the shirt (the panel of horizontal fabric running across the back of your shoulders) should end at the corner of your shoulders, where the sleeve begins. It should not extend over the crest of your shoulder and end an inch or two down your arm. That would mean it's too big.
Look at that armhole. A higher armhole, less fabric bunching up at your underarm, is good. Trim is good; binding is not.
The mid-section / waist is usually too big. Check it. If the shoulders and collar fit well, and it's ballooning around your waist, then try a different model or fit of shirt, or ask the store to taper the waist. (Or add darts in the back.)
The collar should touch your skin when buttoned, but not constrict.
The cuffs, when buttoned, should not fit over your hand. This is easy to adjust: just move the button in. Then they will fall to the correct place around your wrist.
The sleeves, when unbuttoned, should reach near your knuckles. When they are buttoned they fall around your wrist, with some fabric bunching up along the length of your arm, which allows the cuffs to stay put when you bend your arm.
Check those shoulders! While some of this is like religion to people--the size of the shoulder, the padding--I prefer what's called a natural shoulder (minimal structure and padding) that does not extend beyond the edge of your actual shoulder. If you have large biceps, allow the shoulder to extend just a bit so your upper arm doesn't bulge out of the sleeve, but otherwise fit the shoulder as closely as possible.
Feel the chest and look at the waist. The chest will probably be okay if the shoulders already fit; the waist can be taken in or let out if necessary.
The other religious principle on jackets is sleeve length. Put on that well-fitting shirt you bought above and fit the jacket sleeve length to be about a 1/2" shorter. It looks so much better than being a 1/2" too long. If you don't have that well-fitting dress shirt yet, the jacket sleeve should fall exactly to the break of your wrist: where your arm becomes your hand.
Pull them up until you can't (comfortably) pull them up any more. Believe it or not, this is where the trouser maker designed them to be worn. You can let them drop a bit, but not too much so that the crotch of the trouser is more than an inch or two below your more delicate parts. If the waist is too high like this, find different trousers. Find a different fit--a lower-rise or lower-waisted one, perhaps. Or if you like the high-waisted ones and have the length altered to fit, then keep them high, all the time, with a belt or suspenders.
The hips of the trouser should fit you well, and they can't easily be altered. The waist and "seat" (butt) can easily be let out or taken in. Therefore, try fitting the hips first and alter the waist from there.
On length, the tailor will usually ask you if you like a full break, slight break, or no break. Go down the middle: slight break! Easy enough, right?
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