Documentation here: http://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#template-strings says "Instead of the normal %-based substitutions, Templates support $-based substitutions..." I believe it is confusing to refer to %-based substitutions in a way that implies they still exist in Python 3. It would be better to fix this to either refer to {} substitution or to remove the reference comparing it to normal string substitution altogether.
Sorry, my mistake -- I thought that %-based formatting had been deprecated and removed by now, because it wasn't documented in library/string.html . However, I still think referring to %-based formatting as "normal" in Python 3 is confusing to readers as it is not the preferred system.
