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Tu ne dois pas coller ce tissu, tu dois le découper.

Tu ne dois pas coller ce tissu, tu dois le découper.
You must not glue this fabric, you must cut it out.
From Lesson 109:Pronoun placement with infinitives (le faire)·French

Questions & Answers about Tu ne dois pas coller ce tissu, tu dois le découper.

Why is le placed right before découper instead of before dois?
When a sentence has a conjugated verb followed by an infinitive (like dois + découper), the object pronoun goes immediately before the infinitive it belongs to. Since you are cutting it (le découper), the pronoun le goes right before the verb for "cut".
What does the le refer to in this sentence?
It replaces ce tissu (this fabric) from the first half of the sentence to avoid repeating it. Because tissu is a masculine singular noun, we use the masculine singular pronoun le to mean "it".
Why doesn't the negative ne ... pas go around the infinitive coller?
In French, the negative words ne and pas usually form a sandwich around the conjugated verb. Here, dois is the conjugated verb, so it becomes ne dois pas. The infinitive coller stays outside the sandwich.
Why use ce for "this" instead of cet or cette?
Tissu is a masculine singular word that starts with a consonant, so it takes ce. As a quick refresher: use cette for feminine words (like cette chemise) and cet for masculine words starting with a vowel (like cet anorak).

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