EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED ANDREW Coursed instruments are referred to as COURSED COURSED not string You seek to raise the IGNORANCE of manufacturers of folk and rock instruments to a virtue to a new musicological convention The centuriesold academic convention that obviously predates rock musicians maintains that a pair of strings is termed a course and instruments with courses are named for their number of COURSES You convention you mention that contradicts this is nothing more than ignorance you wish to dress up as something more   Tell me Andrew Alder church drummer and rhythm guitarist who has never in his life played an actual tenstring guitar if you notate music for a coursed instrument do you write  or  separate lines in tablature NO You write one per course which is in practical musical effect one string If you write it in musical notation can you even read this I doubt highly would you use numbered circles up to  or  for each socalled individual string NO You would notate the first two strings as a circled number  the second pair of strigns as a circled  the th and th strings as a circled number  etc These instruments are COURSED For all practical purposes these instruments are NOT tenstring guitars with the hypen a term that has come to signify a specific instrument an instument you are obscuring and confusing by introducing misinformative garbage You deserve no less than uncivility I wil let you play at being a musicologist for a few weeksmonths until I have the time to undo your work So play ahead