How do I

cbaft,

It is indeed different to the original letters. Are they in the same Layer of the same document?

It looks more or less as if the Rasterize Effect is turned on, or Anti-Aliasing is turned off in the Preferences.

The former will hit only the object (or Layer if applied to that), and can be seen in the Appearance palette when the object (or the Layer) is selected

The latter will hit everything.

Is it also happening if you create a new Document and try the same?

I shall ponder and maybe come up with something even sillier.

A monitor display paths using pixels. Depending on the nature of the curve, it might show. There's no way to change that and most of the time it won't matter either, because it's just a fact of life.

As for printing, I wouldn't worry a lot. If you are printing in offset printing, resolution will be sufficient. Only when printing on some low budget desktop printer you might or might not run into issues

It's difficult to suggest a solution without knowing how the intended end result should look. When you edited the letters did you delete anchor points on the path?

Most fonts, at least ones that are well authored, will have the minimum number of anchor points needed to define the path. The number of anchor points will vary based on whether the fonts use TrueType quadratic B-splines or Postscript-based cubic B-splines. Fonts with Postscript-based outlines tend to have fewer anchor points. However, the trend seems to have shifted in favor of TrueType outlines for various technical reasons.

Anyway, it can be especially tricky to alter letters without the curves and other parts looking wonky afterward. If I have to do something like that I'll do things like keep a copy of the original letter on a layer underneath the one where I'm working to use as a guide. It can help to use the scissors tool to break apart smaller segments of a path and then make alterations without the rest of the path going crazy.

Hi @clbaft,

The bottom letter almost looks rasterized. Is there a chance that you have rasterized it by mistake (especially if it's different than the other letters)? If it's text that has been outlined only, it should retain its smoothness.