diff --git a/src/PIL/__init__.py b/src/PIL/__init__.py
index a07280e31..bc8cfed8c 100644
--- a/src/PIL/__init__.py
+++ b/src/PIL/__init__.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-"""Pillow {} (Fork of the Python Imaging Library)
+"""Pillow (Fork of the Python Imaging Library)
 
 Pillow is the friendly PIL fork by Alex Clark and Contributors.
     https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/
@@ -24,8 +24,6 @@ PILLOW_VERSION = __version__ = _version.__version__
 
 del _version
 
-__doc__ = __doc__.format(__version__)  # include version in docstring
-
 
 _plugins = ['BlpImagePlugin',
             'BmpImagePlugin',