Thanks everyone, looks like I need to do the grunt work of reading and trying myself (what's the other way?).
Tim, "smash" is a very Eagle term. This is where we separate the component from its name/value; therefore we can move name/value anywhere in our workspace. Example of my problem (taken anywhere else from the web to give an example)
You can see the names of some parts are intruding into other parts. In my case, the problem occurs when I am drawing electrical schematics. Thus my original post.
Clobbering? I thought that was regular English...