warnings when using % and printf

jeanluca has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks,

I just tried the following:

use warnings ;
use strict ;

my $total = 99 ;
print "total is %s%\n", $total ;
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Running this gives you/me the following warning:

Invalid conversion in printf: "%)" at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/M
+y_module.pm line 401.
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Any suggestions how to get rid of this warning?

Thnx a lot
Luca