In this work, we present surface tension experimental measurements for eight binary systems containing water or ethanol and an ionic liquid (IL) of the 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium alkyl sulphate family, being the alkyl chain of the anion: ethyl, butyl, hexyl and octyl. Measurements were performed at the temperature of 25.0 degrees C and atmospheric pressure. All four ILs are completely miscible with water and ethanol, but for a concentration range of the octyl sulphate IL aqueous system the mixture jellifies, and so it is not possible to measure its surface tension. These measurements allow us to study the influence of the anion size on the surface tension for the pure IL compounds, and the role of the two different solvents in the surface tension behaviour. Thus, we observe that it is completely different when mixed with water or with ethanol, as also happens in other mixtures with different ionic liquids. From the experimental data, we extract surface tension deviations using the most popular definition. The calculated deviations for the ethanol based system are fitted using the Redlich-Kister equation and a novel one previously reported by us. Furthermore, we have also calculated the reduced surface pressure for the aqueous mixtures, which is fitted with good agreement using a theoretical equation obtained from the Bahe-Varela pseudo-lattice model. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.