I knew that dragging the favicon from the URL bar to the Desktop results in a webloc. This is helpful, and expected. The favicon is the URL proxy, and should act like the object it represents. To get a *text* clipping, I figured I'd drag the *text* instead of the favicon. This should result in a text clipping, right? Nope. The Finder recognizes the http: prefix, and 'helpfully' converts it to a webloc file for you. Not what I wanted, or expected.
Mildly annoyed, I decided to break its helpfulness by prepending a space. Voila. Drag the resulting text from the URL box in Safari, and you get a text clipping you can drop anywhere.

