These are simply string literals that allow for embedded expressions. They can to but need not necessarily include placeholders.

Some uses for template literals are:

  • Multi-line strings
  • Expression interpolation to anything within a placeholder will be parsed and evaluated inline immediately

Important things to note

In You Don’t Know JS: ES6 & Beyond Kyle Simpson describes an important misconception about ES6 Template Literals to be aware of:

…it’s important not to think of these entities as special template values, as you cannot assign the unevaluated form of the literal to something and reuse it. The `..` string literal is more like an IIFE in the sense that it’s automatically evaluated inline. The result of a `..` string literal is, simply, just a string

For this reason he suggests they should have been called interpolated string literals.

In addition to template literals as described here, ES6 introduced tagged template literals and raw strings to it’s worth being aware of these but, to be honest, I can’t immediately see a use case for them.