diff --git a/R/footnote.R b/R/footnote.R
index 5c77e50..daecbd9 100644
--- a/R/footnote.R
+++ b/R/footnote.R
@@ -206,7 +206,7 @@
       out <- sub(paste0("\\\\begin\\{", table_info$tabular, "\\}"),
                  paste0("\\\\begin{ThreePartTable}\n\\\\begin{TableNotes}",
                         ifelse(footnote_as_chunk, "[para]", ""),
-                        "\n\\\\small\n", footnote_text,
+                        "\n", footnote_text,
                         "\n\\\\end{TableNotes}\n\\\\begin{",
                         table_info$tabular, "}"),
                  out)
@@ -234,7 +234,7 @@
                  paste0("\\\\end{", table_info$tabular,
                         "}\n\\\\begin{tablenotes}",
                         ifelse(footnote_as_chunk, "[para]", ""),
-                        "\n\\\\small\n", footnote_text,
+                        "\n", footnote_text,
                         "\n\\\\end{tablenotes}\n\\\\end{threeparttable}"),
                  out)
     }
diff --git a/inst/NEWS.md b/inst/NEWS.md
index 32a9bb8..11d25c2 100644
--- a/inst/NEWS.md
+++ b/inst/NEWS.md
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
 
 * Fixed header formatting for repeated header row in latex longtable (#183)
 
-* 
+* Removed the \small tag in threeparttable (#162)
 
 
 kableExtra 0.8.0