It is meta-prescriptive.

It doesn't say, "Do this to make your code better." It says, "If you have this specific problem under these constraints, then this can help."

definitely yes, I'd even go as far as to say they're just exemplary, meaning "well written code can look (for example) like this", but since they became "industry standards", they help your code be understood (either by other people, or by you when you eventually forget how/why you wrote it that way), which helps speed up code review and make it easier to maintain / refactor old code...