Subtract is creating holes in my text design

[DJBowden]

I’m trying to use subtract to remove letters from my design so that just the background is exposed. My problem is that the font is script, so some of the letters overlap. In the areas where the letters overlap, rather than the background being exposed, it is creating a white space.

[EllenM]

Hi.
This is simply the wrong fill rule - but you need a few more steps to make it a watertight shape for further Boolean operations. Let’s see if this will help already:

Cheers