[Python] Put a symbol before and after each character in a string

I would like to add brackets to each character in a string. So

"HelloWorld"


should become:

"[H][e][l][l][o][W][o][r][l][d]"


I tried a straightforward loop:

word = "HelloWorld"
newWord = ""
for letter in word:
newWord += "[%s]" % letter


But can I do it more efficiently? I'm concerned about the repeated string concatenations.


See also: How to insert a character after every 2 characters in a string — note that techniques based on .join will not add anything before the first (or after the last) character, unless explicitly separately added.

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