Wrapping selecting text in enclosing characters in Emacs

Question

In Textmate I can wrap enclosing characters (\'(\', \'[\', \'\"\', etc.) around text by selecting it and hitting the opening character. For example, if I select word<

Answer 1

Since Emacs 24.1(released 2012-06).
Put this in your emacs init: (electric-pair-mode 1).
Now If you select a word and hit (, it will become (word). Same for ", [, { etc.