Are Guidelines Destroying Writing?

Writing an article with your own unique voice can be difficult, especially when catering to all the guidelines. Many writers don’t get a chance to express their creativity because most companies have their own format they like to use. The word count is sometimes hard to follow because you can’t cram all you want to say using such a small amount of words.

Are these restrictions making all writers sound the same? If so, what can be done to fix this problem? My opinion is this, writing shouldn’t have any guidelines because it makes all the articles read the same. Without guidelines you get a variety of writing styles, and opinions which results in some interesting articles.

It almost seems like major corporations are cranking out articles by the masses and completely ignoring quality. I thought the whole purpose of being a writer was to see things from a different perspective. Who suffers the most from these restrictions the readers, writers, or both?