Is it okay to 'abuse' re-assignment? Because I don't like using \ to break long lines (to comply with PEP8), I tend to do something like this:

message = "There are {} seconds in {} hours."
message = message.format(nhours*3600, nhours)
print(message)


It also makes code cleaner. Is this an okay way of doing things?
It's more than okay, it is nicely readable, has no problems and involves no abuse whatsoever. I sometimes do the same.