In a local-length nitride SONOS device and a method for forming the same, a local-length nitride floating gate structure is provided for mitigating or preventing lateral electron migration in the nitride floating gate. The structure includes a thin gate oxide, which leads to devices having a lower threshold voltage. In addition, the local-length nitride layer is self-aligned, which prevents nitride misalignment, and therefore leads to reduced threshold voltage variation among the devices.