I wonder if the early use of the shortened "structure amplitude" is
because it was a pain to do any typing, word processing, typesetting, etc
before Gutenberg.
But soon crystallographers will be solving all their structures on their
cell phones and also just text messaging manuscripts to editors and
CCP4BB. So we should probably be thinking of the newer shortened
spelling of our scientific terms of the future.
Jim
PS: I vote for that "structure factor amplitude" be used in text books and
|F| on cell phones. Student of 2015: "You mean 'abs-F' is really
pronounced 'structure factor amplitude'? I didn't know that!"
