Thanks for the info about the bracket-positioning. (feature request for Wolfram from me)
Thanks for the advice about Ctrl + '.'; that is what I have been doing already. When I do that, though, I don't know in advance how many times I'll need to press ctrl-. before the right amount is selected; so I need to watch the display and react to what I see on the screen, and that feedback process slows me down by a factor of about 10 compared to what a one-keystroke solution would do. When I learn how, I'll try to implement my own solution, but until then, I'll leave it as a feature request. Like all feature requests, I expect the community will dismiss it as pointless, but once Wolfram implements it, the community will say it's great.