To reduce chattering in sliding-mode control, a boundary layer around the switching surface is used, and a continuous control is applied within the boundary; The effects of various control laws within the boundary layer on chattering and error convergence in different systems are studied. New functions for chattering reduction and error convergence inside the boundary layer are proposed which are discontinuous in magnitude but not in sign. The internal model principle has been used to generalize the design for the class of nonlinear systems being considered.