Intercalation into graphite of electron donors is discussed, regarding the nature of the chemical species to be intercalated. In the binary compounds, the intercalated sheets are always mono-layered, while, in the ternaries, they are poly-layered, as soon as the electronegativities of both intercalated elements exhibit a sizeable difference. In the case of the ternary compounds, the intercalated sheets can be regarded as 2D slices of the corresponding bulk binary compounds. These slices are subjected to various distortions, that are caused by the presence of the adjacent graphene planes