@HS Could you please complete the following:
a) Quick! The police ___ coming!
b) The cattle ___ lowing, the baby awakes.

Please also explain how, in your world, we can tell which nouns are "collective" and which are not.

Suggestions:

"He assisted his boss with planning the project launch" OR
"He assisted his boss in planning the project launch"

drafting would be used for engineering drawings, a book or report, or a timetable or schedule. Planning is more general.

"That partner assisted the company with additional funds to finance the mall construction"
OR ...to finance the construction of the mall.

Whilst I agree that the term "indirect speech" has almost always been used in writing to refer to "reported speech", it has on occasion been used to refer to oblique or circuitous ways of addressing a topic. For instance, in some tome on Quakerism from 1808:

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=bNQ3AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA16&dq=%22indirect+speech%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiC6JPy37XNAhWEi5QKHbBkB844ChDoAQhBMAk#v=onepage&q=%22indirect%20speech%22&f=false

and in Judson's Burmese-English dictionary 1893 "this speech is indirect and circuitous":

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=LSEYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA258&dq=%22speech+is+indirect%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo36aQ37XNAhULFpQKHQ_HD_gQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22speech%20is%20indirect%22&f=false

The question for you would be if the term "indirect speech" is not to be used for these types of polite roundabout ways of addressing a topic, what other terminology could be used?

@HS "Calculus" is perhaps first encountered as some awful maths concept and formula at school, and seems to be the most common meaning. However, there are alternatives, including specialist meanings in dentistry and medicine, and also a more general meaning as follows:

"A decision-making method, especially one appropriate for a specialised realm. " (wiktionary)

"calculation; estimation or computation" (dictionary.com)

2008 December 16, “Cameron calls for bankers’ ‘day of reckoning’”, Financial Times:

The Tory leader refused to state how many financiers he thought should end up in jail, saying: “There is not some simple calculus."

If a Tory PM has used the word in this meaning, it must be okay, mustn't it?

Just to be clear: we are not discussing the "-ish" ending of words like abolish, punish, which comes from French.
"-ish" in the sense of "somewhat" is recorded in the OED as far back as 1894/1916
The alternative is to use the French version: "-esque" .
"Ish" has become a new standalone word in British English, meaning somewhat.

@Wheelye With so much international emailing, it is just a matter of avoiding ambiguity. In the same way it is better to avoid ambiguous date formats such as 03/04/2016 and always to spell out the month: March 4, 2016 or 4th March 2016. Similarly if one simply says "this Wednesday" or "Wednesday week" or in an email adds the day as "Wed 12th", then all is clear.

@HS there is some discussion on this topic here:

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t11916.htm

the last two comments there attempt to distinguish the meaning of "not much choice" from "not much of a choice".

Certainly both phrases with or without "of" are in use.
If one searches the web for "that big of a deal" and similar phrases, their usage seems to have taken off in print since the 1980s, seemingly on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether this is because the "of" was edited out prior to that is not clear.

@Joan I would suggest:
thirty-two and thirty-two-hundredths percent
or
thirty-two and thirty-two hundredths percent

@tori I think you will find "an HTML" is more common if you search the internet.
In some schools, especially in Northern Ireland, 'H' is pronounced "haitch", so some people write "a HTML".

"A sentence that occurs within brackets in the course of another sentence does not generally have its first word capitalized just because it starts a sentence. The enclosed sentence may have a question mark or exclamation mark added, but not a period."
Eg
Alexander then conquered (who would have believed it?) most of the known world.

Parentheses are somewhat "jarring to the reader and best avoided where feasible" - as per West Michigan University

I would remove the parentheses from your alternative stand-alone sentence