In some languages, e.g. French, the brackets are padded with a space character:
and
Also in other languages, some CMS users add a space between bracket and enclosed text just for decorative purposes.
This should be handled by CSS instead, which is hard because CSS currently (and quite probably also in the near to mid future) can't select individual letters without using a JavaScript or server-side wrapping tool.
Related discussion (wp-typography plugin based on this library): mundschenk-at/wp-typography#291