This special issue of Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science is dedicated to the tenth "Journées montoises d'informatique théorique" conference (Mons theoretical computer science days) which was held, for the first time, at the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Liège, Belgium, From 8th to 11th September 2004. Previous editions of this conference took place in Mons 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998, in Rouen 1991, in Bordeaux 1993, Marseille 1995, Marne-La-Vallée 2000 and Montpellier 2002.

This tenth edition can be considered as a widely international one. We were lucky to have almost 85 participants from fourteen different countries: Austria, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Canada, Czech republic, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland and Portugal. The main proportion of researchers participating to this event was coming from France and Italy where a long tradition of combinatorics on words is well established. During four days, 42 contributed talks and 7 invited talks were given, the main topics being combinatorics on words, numeration systems, automata and formal languages theory, coding theory, verification, bio-informatics, number theory, grammars, text algorithms, symbolic dynamics and tilings. The invited speakers were: J. Cassaigne (CNRS, Luminy-Marseille), D. Caucal (IRISIA-CNRS, Rennes), C. Frougny (LIAFA, Université Paris 8), T. Helleseth (University of Bergen), S. Langerman (FNRS, Université Libre de Bruxelles), F. Neven (Limburgs Universitair Centrum, Diepenbeek), M.-F. Sagot (Inria Rhône-Alpes, Université Lyon I).

We would like to thanks all the participants, the invited speakers and the anonymous referees who made possible this event and special issue. Each paper has been refereed using high scientific standard by two independent referees. Readers of this special issue may wonder why it took so long to obtain it. We have encountered some problems with the formerly chosen journal and for the benefit of the contributors to this issue, we have chosen Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science to publish their work.