Simply Use an Item

In my story Alice is still in the Wonderland foyer. - I’ve created a fan that the player can pick up. But when I try to use the fan I get this message:

The word “use” is not necessary in this story.

How can I set the fan to simply let the player use it? I will go back in later and define my own verbs etc to give the player more flexibility in what they can type in to do certain things. Here is my fan definition:

rabbitFan : Thing 'White Rabbit\'s Fan' 'little fan' @foyer
    "The little fan is ornate and delicate. It was dropped by the white rabbit."
    isListed = nil
    isUsed = nil
    dobjFor(Use)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        verify() {
            if (isHeldBy(me))
            {}
            else
            {
                "Don't let's be silly, you can't possibly fan yourself with a fan that you are not holding. Silly girl.";
                exit;
            }
        }
        action()
        {
            if (me.height > 2)
            {
                "You begin to fan yourself. As soon as the cool air begins to brush against your face you begin to rapidly shrink until the fan is too large and heavy for you to hold.";
                me.height = 1;
                rabbitFan.isUsed = true;
                achieve_RabbitFan.awardPoints();
            }
            if (me.height == 2)
            {
                finishGameMsg('Oh my! Why on Earth did you do such a thing? As you fan yourself you begin to rapidly shrink until you\'ve gone entirely out like a candle.', [finishOptionUndo,finishOptionFullScore]); 
            }
        }
    }
;
achieve_RabbitFan : Achievement { +1 "using the white rabbit's fan" };

TADS 3 doesn’t have a “use” verb built-in, so you’ll have to define it yourself. The Technical Manual has an article on how to create verbs; scroll down to the section on “Verbs with one object”. You’ll have to think about what should happen when the player tries to use things other than the fan. Probably the simplest and best option is to have a message asking the player to be more specific.

Thanks! I had found this article later last night but I just now got it to work! I may be able to use something similar to improve the syntax for drinking from the ‘Drink Me’ bottle too - like “drink from the bottle” etc.