change size of special character

Question

the normal % character is a little bit bigger than numbers so I want to reduce its size by the command {\small }. I tried it with the command \renewcommand{\%}{{\small \%}} but that produces the error: TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [grouping levels=255] \% It's possible to solve it by entering \newcommand{\test}{{\small \%}} but that leaves me to change the expression in around 30 documents with a possibility of making an error myself.

MWE:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\renewcommand{\%}{{\small \%}}
\begin{document}

\%
{\small \%}

(1\%)
(1{\small \%})

\end{document}

An example of the bad looking % charakter (done by changing one command to %\renewcommand{\%}{{\small \%}}:

Answer 1

If you want a solution suitable for all sizes you can try (requires graphicx package)

\let\oldpercent\%
\renewcommand{\%}{\scalebox{0.85}{\oldpercent}}

MWE to generate the example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\let\oldpercent\%
\renewcommand{\%}{\scalebox{0.85}{\oldpercent}}

\begin{document}

\tiny 1\%

\scriptsize 1\%

\footnotesize 1\%

\small 1\%

\normalsize 1\%

\large 1\%

\Large 1\%

\LARGE 1\%

\huge 1\%

\Huge 1\%

\end{document} 

Answer 2

You can do

\let\oldpercent\%
\renewcommand{\%}{{\small \oldpercent}}

But note this only does the right thing at normal size, it will always use \small even if the current size is \huge.