Thanks Engine. I prefer my current standard setup to how your first and second ideas would look. And I do want to stick with numbering. But thanks for the creative solutions!

Thanks OTPM. This is what I'm currently doing, but I'm looking for something better. It looks like you can set the same amount of space between numbers and headings no matter the size of the number, by choosing space rather than a tab stop in the Modify Multilevel list dialog box. But I find the amount of space Word uses is too small for my liking, and I'd like to control the size of that space if possible.