Sometimes a picture makes it easier to explain:
See the blue lines and nodes in there when the items are selected and the opacity is reduced?
Those are the actual vector paths that the laser beam will follow when the machine decides where to move…when you set something to Cut or Score, the beam always follows exactly along the center of those vector paths.
What you have created with the paths is an outline of a filled shape for most of the letters, so the beam is going to trace around the outside of the filled shapes that you see. Just because the shapes look like letters, it doesn’t mean there is a single vector path down the center of them.
If you look at the number 4 though…that one is set up to Score correctly. The path runs down the center of the stroke. It’s an open stroke, not a closed path around a shape.
If you use the pen tool to create the letters, by placing a path in the middle, you can score it correctly. Or if you cut the closed path and delete one of the two vector parts that define the shape, you can Score that the way that you want to do.
(More on this is the tutorial below if you have time to look at it, but basically, you’re getting hit with a double trace line around the shape.)
Quick Fix - Use the Pen tool to create your letters.