This has been discussed many, many times. I am trying to understand/follow what's in: Extrude and bevel an imported svg curve
I also took a look at Correct way to create an extruded mesh from a simple SVG shape? ie. Without creating insanely complex nonsense polygons? but I'm not sure that the whole curve-mesh conversion thing is what I want to do (based on other threads, too).
I don't really understand what's going on. I'm suffering the same problem, but I am not finding any "loose" vertices. If I hide everything except for one letter, select any vertex on that letter, and then select linked, I get the entire letter very clearly. Nothing seems "loose":
I am creating the SVG by tracing a bitmap in Inksape and then exporting. I don't think these are "loose" curves, but I don't really know what I'm doing.
If I set the bevel to some insanely tiny dimension (eg: .0000001), I then get a very stark "edge" in the center of the extrusion on the final object when a material is applied:
Since I have the original bitmap, is there something I should do differently to export it from Inkskape to prevent this? Is mesh conversion and back the only way?