The word 'affectation' is correct and commonly used in written English.
It is typically used to refer to someone's manner or behavior that appears artificially assumed and is intended to impress or influence others. For example: "Michael's elaborate vocabulary and extravagant manners were seen by many as an affectation of sophistication."
The hands have become part of what makes him distinctive as an actor, affecting as they do the way he moves and holds himself, so much so that some young actors assume it is an affectation.
Which is not, though, affectation.
From the vantage point of the supposedly classless 1990s, the effort which Anthony Wedgwood Benn put into reinventing himself as plain Tony Benn may sound like an affectation.
"We find it more chic and more spiritual to doubt everything .Up to a point, this is an affectation of the elite.
In the other of his three books, "The Rings of Saturn", a hypersensitive narrator wanders around Norfolk and Suffolk, contemplating lost industries, civilisations, times and people in a manner that verges on affectation and self-parody.
A taut page-turning thriller that weaves together themes of youthful affectation and intellectual arrogance, guilt and moral retribution, "The Secret History" was hailed as a glittering literary debut.
The Review of those days exuded the air of a colonial enterprise the affectation of the longyi was a bit of a giveaway, as was the identity of the magazine's biggest ultimate shareholder, the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank.
For most of us soccer is just an odd affectation of foreigners, like minuscule cars, pink shirts on men and the metric system.
Bizarrely, one of Dr Lomborg's critics in Scientific American criticises as an affectation the book's insistence on documenting every statistic and every quotation with a reference to a published source.
Mr Clarke is a "bloke": a stranger to affectation who is at ease with himself, his pint, his paunch, his rumpled suit and his well-worn beliefs.
When the Guardian began printing prominent notes and corrections, it was seen on other titles as a feeble, liberal, American affectation.
