I'd be curious for you to expand on your very last statement.
[:] <snip>
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I don't have any particularly brilliant constructive suggestions for how to deal with this. The ΔV=IR formulation is so deeply entrenched that I see little hope of overturning it anytime soon. Personally I tend to avoid it entirely, and write Va-Vb=IR ... but students need to know how to read ΔV=IR, and need to recognize it as being backwards from any sane definition of "Δ".
BTW, putting absolute value bars around one side or the other in Ohm's law is *not* an acceptable arrangement.
Believe it or not, I've seen that done.