Previous experimental studies on clay potentiometric titration have been unable to distinguish inorganic cation exchange in the interlayer and on basal plane surfaces from specific pH-dependent sorption of cations and anions on the edges. In this study, we refined a titration technique, combining discontinuous backtitration and cation exchange capacity (CEC) measurements, and applied it to the potentiometric titration of Na- and Ca-conditioned montmorillonites. This technique can be used to accurately measure cation exchange, edge surface proton charge, dissolution of clay, and precipitation of new phases. Thus, a precise measurement of the variations of net proton surface charge is possible. This has important implications for clay surface modeling (see part II of this article) and for processes that depend on the clay surface charge, e.g., alteration, theological processes, and contamination retention applications. In addition, this study confirms the adsorption of ionic pairs such as CaCl+ in exchange site positions and shows that CaOH+ could behave like CaCl+. This result, together with the evidence of precipitation of a Ca-Si phase over a short time-scale (1 week) at high pH and low temperature, can be used to model clay-concrete interactions more accurately. We confirmed and quantified the H+/Na+ exchange reaction at low pH. Finally, we demonstrate that both the edge surface charge and the permanent structural charge are compensated for by the nonspecific sorption of cations from solution across the entire pH range from 4 to 11. Under these conditions, the surface potential is fully screened and does not need to be invoked in modeling sorption processes on clay particles in dilute suspensions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.