Align text in a fixed space equally centered

Question

\paragraph{Testing}
\begin{itemize}
  \item (Help)
  \item (Individual)
  \item (Test)
\end{itemize}

This gives me

I'm trying to align text inside parenthesis equally & center. Something like the below. Tried makebox but I'm sure how to use it properly.

(   Help   )
(Individual)
(   Test   )

Answer 1

Description

You can use a tabular environment for this. The brackets are placed automatically for the first and last column.

I defined an environment bracketitemize and a command \bitem to make this more comfortable.

Result

Code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\newenvironment{bracketitemize}{%
    \setlength{\tabcolsep}{0pt}%
    \begin{tabular}{ >{\textbullet\quad (} c c >{)} c }%
}{%
    \end{tabular}%
}
\newcommand{\bitem}[1]{%
    & #1 &\%
}
\begin{document}
manually:
{
    \setlength{\tabcolsep}{0pt}
    \begin{tabular}{  >{\textbullet\quad (} c c >{)} c }
        & Help &\
        & Individual &\
        & Test &\
    \end{tabular}
}
\medskip
With \texttt{bracketitemize}:
\begin{bracketitemize}
    \bitem{Help}
    \bitem{Individual}
    \bitem{Test}
\end{bracketitemize}
\end{document}

Answer 2

\makebox[<width>]{...} creates a box of fixed length and centres its content by default if the content is shorter then the box. However, you would need to "find" the correct value of the parameter <width>.

A more convenient macro is defined in eqparbox, that is \eqmakebox[<label>]{...}. The difference is you supply a label, e.g. list, instead of a length <width> and a length of all boxes corresponding to the same label [list] are calculated to fit the longest content.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{eqparbox}
\newcommand\mb[1]{(\eqmakebox[list]{#1})}
\begin{document}
\paragraph{Testing}
\begin{itemize}
\item \mb{Help}
\item \mb{Individual}
\item \mb{Test}
\end{itemize}
\end{document}