W5LZ I understand why people argue the polarization of an inverted V, But fact is, the antenna is vertically polarized, But not omni directional. It presents lobes off the broad sides of the antenna. Here is a decent read on the subject
Radio Antenna Engineering - Traveling-wave Antenna for Vertically Polarized Transmission
Think of a cubical quad antenna. For vertical polarization, the antenna must be fed on the side of the diamond. that creates an upside down V(inverted V) ^ and a standard V. Typically the center conductor would be fed to the inverted V (^) and the ground would feed the V portion. This causes the phases to cancel out at the opposite point of the feed and you get an inverted V.
A wire inverted V does the same thing but it is a half of the quad on it side. And because there is no DC connection between the ground and driven element, the earth ground and mutual inductance between the legs makes up the rest. That is one reason there are optimal degrees of angle on the legs of inverted Vs depending on freq. But for our purposes and since we use tuners, its not a big deal and we accept some loss in gain/performance for multi band ops.