There are several types of text fields, with different characteristics. Text fields can be either <em>plain</em> or <em>formatted</em>: plain text fields do not contain HTML, while formatted fields can contain HTML and are processed through <em>text filters</em> (these are provided by the core Filter module; if you have that module enabled, see the related topic below on filters for more information). Text fields can also be regular-length (with a limit of 255 characters) or <em>long</em> (with a very large character limit), and long formatted text fields can include a <em>summary</em> attribute. All possible combinations of these characteristics exist as text field types; for example, <em>Text (plain)</em> and <em>Text (formatted, long, with summary)</em> are two examples of text field types.