You can get perfectly uniformed exclusions with the instructions above with one (or two) additional steps....
Question first (only comes into play in the end steps): Do you have a preference in using masks or are booleans okay?
Basic process:
1) Convert your letters to curves
1) Stroke your letters ( :D.... sorry that sounded funny)... click "draw behind fill" just so you can see better.
2) Expand stroke and use a copy of each letter to boolean subtract the overlaps.
Now you have a perfectly uniform thick outline shape running around each letter.
3) use these shapes to either create masks or boolean subtract the areas to be removed.
You can do this a number of ways.... labor intensive or really quickly using booleans again.
A) Labor intensive: you can add points and cut up the shape into the pieces you need.
or
B ) B) Quick: use booleans again to get the pieces. BUT be careful here because the boolean will create pieces which are exact to the underlying letter shape. If you use these to mask, or for a final boolean subtract, they MAY leave tiny artifacts. To fix, add a point on the end of each piece and drag out a tiny bit.
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This might be coming across as confusing. Tell me if you get lost and I'll post some images :) .
