Abundances of O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Fe, Ni and Ba are determined for 30 nearby lower‐main‐sequence stars in the Northern sky using high‐resolution, high signal‐to‐noise ratio spectra. Our results show an equilibrium of [Fe/H]I and [Fe/H]II and a much smaller star‐to‐star scatter of the abundance ratios as a function of metallicity compared with the results of Kotoneva et al. The non‐local thermodynamic equilibrium (non‐LTE) corrections for oxygen are considered and found to be small (∼−0.04 dex). A flat trend of [O/Fe] exists over the whole metallicity range. The non‐LTE effects for some important elements are discussed, and it is found that the abundance pattern for our programme stars is very similar to that of F and G dwarfs.