I didn't vote in the poll, because I'm aware of several contradictory "up/down" and "high/low" conventions for guitar and have consciously tried to avoid "horizontal vs. vertical" controversy.
1. The lowest PITCH on guitar is played on the string with the highest (sixth on a 6-string instrument) NUMBER.
2. When a guitar is held conventionally, the strings with the higher pitches lie below ("lower than") the lower-pitched strings.
3. Chord diagrams are most often shown with the fretboard with strings vertical and frets horizontal.
4. When shown in standard notation, chords appear as vertical structures, whereas single-note lines are displayed horizontally.
I've heard guitar players refer to the first string as "low E." I certainly hope nobody here does that, but it really does happen.
And on a steel guitar, it's all horizontal. :)
Jay
